Bank Regulation and Supervision in 180 Countries from 1999 to 2011, NBER working papers Jan 2013

James R. Barth
Gerard Caprio, Jr.
Ross Levine

In this paper and the associated online database, we provide new data and measures of bank regulatory
and supervisory policies in 180 countries from 1999 to 2011. The data include and the measures are
based upon responses to hundreds of questions, including information on permissible bank activities,
capital requirements, the powers of official supervisory agencies, information disclosure requirements,
external governance mechanisms, deposit insurance, barriers to entry, and loan provisioning. The dataset
also provides information on the organization of regulatory agencies and the size, structure, and performance
of banking systems. Since the underlying surveys are large and complex, we construct summary indices
of key bank regulatory and supervisory policies to facilitate cross-country comparisons and analyses
of changes in banking policies over time.