An economist at IMF Research Department, focusing on international banking and finance.

CV
  • IMF, Research Department, 2010-present;
  • IMF, United States and Canada desks, 2008-2010;
  • Bank of England, 2006-2008.
  • PhD, U. Amsterdam, 2008.

Contact
Research

    NEW VERSION:    Banking and Trading (with Arnoud Boot)    
    Banks may trade too much, and in too risky a fashion, compared to what is socially optimal. These distortions became more acute in the last decade due to deeper financial markets.  

     Publications
  • Liquidity and Transparency in Bank Risk Management  J Fin Intermediation  forthcoming
    Liquidity buffers (e.g. Basel LCR) can only protect banks against small liquidity shocks. Banks' transparency is essential to maintain market access during prolonged systemic stress.
  • Capital Regulation and Tail Risk (with Enrico Perotti and Razvan Vlahu) Int J Central Banking 7(4): 123-163 (2011)   On VOX
    Banks with higher capital are less likely to breach the minimal capital ratio, and consequently may take more risk.
  • The Dark Side of Bank Wholesale Funding (with Rocco Huang) J Fin Intermediation 20(2):248-63 (2011)
    The providers of wholesale funding may choose to remain uninformed of bank fundamentals, and trigger inefficient liquidations based on imprecise public information.
    • The top cited paper on  "wholesale funding" on Google Scholar.
    • One of the first papers (2008) to link the crisis to the inefficiencies in short-term wholesale funding markets
  • Bank Liquidity Regulation and the Lender of Last Resort J Fin Intermediation 18(4):541-58 (2009)
    Bank may hold insufficient liquidity and gamble for LOLR support, especially when other banks in the system are also doing so.
      In progress
  • Bailouts, Systemic Insurance, and Bank Risk-Taking (with Giovanni Dell'Ariccia)
  • Franchise Value and Risk Capacity (with Razvan Vlahu)

Policy papers
  • Shadow Banking: Economics and Policy (with Stijn Claessens, Zoltan Poszar, and Manmohan Singh)   IMF Staff Discussion Note 12/12   On VOX
    Two key shadow banking functions are securitization and collateral intermediation. They may be economically valuable, but without appropriate regulation can pose significant systemic risks.
  • New Risks in Financial Intermediation, in IMF Global Financial Stability Report, Oct 2012
    Significant changes in the structure of the financial sector over the last decade have led to new systemic risks. 
  • Externalities and Macroprudential Policy (with Gianni De Nicolo and Giovanni Favara)   IMF Staff Discussion Note 12/05  On VOX   
    The economic rationale of macroprudential policy is to correct market failures - risk externalities across financial institutions and from finance to the real economy.
  • Why Are Canadian Banks More Resilient? (with Rocco Huang, 2009),  IMF WP 09/152   On VOX  The dataset
    Depository funding was a major factor for the stability of large OECD banks during the crisis. Canadian banks had significantly more deposits than OECD average.


Reports / Country work


Short Bio
  • Lev Ratnovski is an economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He focuses on international banking and finance issues. Previously, he worked on the United States and Canada desks of the IMF (2008-10), and in the Financial Stability area of the Bank of England (2006-08). Mr. Ratnovski holds a B.Sc. from HSE-Moscow and a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam.
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      Лев Ратновский Lev Ratnovskiy