During this period, governments in a number of jurisdictions have taken steps to strengthen the financial stability mandates of their central banks and in some cases have given them additional regulatory powers to that end. One commentator has gone so far as to say that the financial stability role of central banks has been rediscovered with a vengeance 1.
Many are familiar with the study by Bayomi, Laxton and Pesenti from 2004, which suggests that increasing competition in the euro area to the US level could boost its output by no less than 12 percent.