In the case of the United States, the Financial Stability Oversight Council was formed to identify systemic risks and gaps in supervision and to recommend regulatory enhancements. It is chaired by the Treasury. The central bank (The Federal Reserve) is part of the Council alongside the heads of eight main federal regulatory agencies. The Council identifies systemically important financial institutions, which are supervised by the Federal Reserve, and recommends policies to its members. In Chile, as in many other countries in the world, a Financial Stability Council was created that gathers together supervisors and the Central Bank. It is chaired by the Ministry of Finance. The Council assesses issues of Financial Stability and coordinates information sharing. With regard to the decision making within the central bank in relation to its macroprudential instruments, one question is whether it would be necessary to set up a different body for making these decisions within the central bank. Arguments in favor of this idea are the different nature of expertise required by its members, and the potential tension that there might be among the objectives of monetary policy and those of financial stability. Arguments against are that, leaving aside potential tensions between policy objectives for a moment, both polices require coordination, and the most efficient way to do this is within the same decision making body. Trying to find examples of central banks in a similar institutional setting to ours is not easy. Mainly it has got to be the case of independent central banks without banking supervision.

Although this concern has been present for quite some time in many central banks, including the Central Bank of Chile, the international debate has stressed the need to have a macroprudencial policy framework in place, with its own tools to tackle this objective. Countries have already begun to consider this framework as one of the pillars that sustain a good economic policy. Having been spared a crisis or acute stress from a financial crisis since the early 1980s, and in particular after the latest crisis, has allowed us to watch this debate with prudence and pragmatism, without needing to take hasty policy measures. We already have some of them in place, but as the international debate on these policies is settling and the evidence about  6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  the efficiency and costs of different tools accumulates, it will be important that we assess their efficiency and carefully study if we should introduce additional tools in our general framework. Thank you. References Akinci, O. and J. Olmstead-Rumsey (2015). How Effective are Macroprudential Policies? An Empirical Investigation, mimeo. Bruno, V., I. Shim and H. Shin (2015). Comparative assessment of macroprudential policies. BIS Working Paper no 502. Cerutti, E., S. Claessens and M.L. Laeven (2015). The Use and Effectiveness of Macroprudential Policies: New Evidence (No. 15–61). Working paper 15/61. International Monetary Fund. Claessens, S., S.R. Ghosh and R. Mihet (2013). Macro-prudential policies to mitigate financial system vulnerabilities. Journal of International Money and Finance, 39, 153–185. Kuttner, K.N. and I. Shim (2013).