Regulating the Regulators: The Changing Face of Financial Supervision Architectures Before and After the Financial Crisis

In response to the current financial crisis, many countries are considering reforms in their supervisory regimes, while others, who went through a round of reforms before the crisis, are looking at the architecture once again. This paper, based on updated information on 102 countries for the period 1998-2009 and evaluating both the existing settings and the proposals of reform in the US and at the level of the EU, addresses two crucial questions: Which are the main features of the reshaping of the supervisory architectures? Which is the role central banks are taking in the changing environment of the financial supervision