Prudential Supervision: What Works and What Doesn't.

• Position: Review

Prudential Supervision: What Works and What Doesn't, edited by Frederic S. Mishkin, is available from the University of Chicago Press for $50.00. This NBER Conference Report contains eight papers, seven commentaries, and seven discussion summaries developed from material presented at a conference in January 2000.

Prudential supervision guards against excessive risk taking, moral hazard, and corruption, using government regulation and monitoring to ensure the soundness of the banking system and, by extension, the economy at large. The contributors focus on fundamental issues and key pragmatic concerns; they foresee a...