Governance, Transparency, and Accountability in Financial Institutions and Regulatory Bodies, New York 2009

Issues of Transparency, Accountability and Governance have long been studied and the importance of their roles and optimum levels much-debated with regards to Central Banks as well as International Financial Institutions and other regulatory bodies.

In light of the current global financial crisis and the resulting opportunity for policymaking and institutional reform, examining these themes in connection to these institutions has never been so relevant and in fact urgent.

The Initiative for Policy Dialogue in collaboration with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung hosted our first meeting on Governance, Transparency and Accountability in National and International Financial Institutions, on April 27 and 28 at Columbia University in New York City.

On the first day we addressed national institutions, focusing on principles of transparency and policy insights in literature on central banks, and address how problems of transparency, accountability and governance led to inadequacy of efforts to prevent the crisis, and how deficiencies in these qualities manifested themselves in responses to the crisis. We will discuss ideas for institutional reform, and close with a special session on Governance, Transparency and Accountability in developing country central banks.

On the second day we reviewed the same themes with regards to IFI's, Basel Committee, and other regulatory bodies(such as the Financial stability Forum) as well as the 'G's', or groups of countries.