William White, as chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the OECD, was invited to speak to the Ambassadors at their annual retreat on the topic of the future work program of the OECD. He gave strong support to the OECD project called NAEC, New Approaches to Economic Challenges. This project was initiated by the Secretary General in recognition of the shortcomings of the analytical appraches relied upon prior to the crisis, which failed to see the crisis coming and also failed to predict both its magnitude and duration.

William White  was asked by the organizers to sum up the proceedings at the end of the conference. These are his personal observations. The offical summary, jointly drafted with the conference organizers, is on this website under Publications.

In this presentation, William White suggests criteria for allocating  the respsonsibility for macroprudential policies between domestic institutions. He concludes that there are strong grounds for the central bank playing a leading role, particularly with policies designed to prevent crises.

SARB2017PDF
 

This presentation was made at the IMD Global Board Center in Lausanne. It concludes that, while many positive changes have been made, systemic risks still remain. This justifies some more radical thoughts about financial regulation going forward.