Title: The IMF's Annual Macroprudential Policy Survey- Objectives, Design, and Country Responses
Abstract: Responses to the macroprudential policy survey are being made available online at www.imf.org,ensuring access to the detailed survey information for all interested researchers and policymakers worldwide.Genesis.The global financial crisis (GFC) highlighted the need for dedicated macroprudential policy in safeguarding financial stability, and experience with macroprudential policy has been growing since then.Many countries have put in place dedicated institutional arrangements.As pointed out in (IMF-FSB-BIS 2016) progress is also being made with the design and implementation of macroprudential tools, and an increasing body of empirical research has been evaluating the effectiveness of macroprudential policy.The IMF set out a framework to inform its advice on macroprudential policy in 2013 (IMF 2013) and elaborated this further in its IMF Staff Guidance Note on Macroprudential Policy (IMF 2014).A joint report by the IMF, FSB and BIS to the G20 in 2016 took stock of the experiences gained so far regarding elements and practices that can be useful for effective macroprudential policy making (IMF-FSB-BIS 2016) While countries have been using macroprudential tools to mitigate systemic risk, in particularly since the GFC, there is currently no global and regularly updated database of such measures.Similarly, while many countries have introduced new or upgraded existing macroprudential institutional arrangements, no global source of information currently provides detail on these arrangements across countries.Recognizing this gap, the IMF has, in consultation with the FSB and BIS, undertaken to develop a global macroprudential policy database, by leveraging its existing infrastructure and taking advantage of its near-global membership.G20 members welcomed this effort under the German Presidency at the March 18, 2017 meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Baden Baden, and it was subsequently included in the G20 Leaders' Hamburg Action Plan of July 8, 2017. 3 Along with the publication of the first vintage of the database in April 2018, this note provides information on the design of the survey and the data compilation, as well as descriptive statistics summarizing country responses on institutional arrangements and measures in use. B. Design and ProcessDesign.The survey questionnaire was developed by IMF staff in consultation with the FSB and BIS.It asks countries to report measures that aim to contain systemic risk, in line with the definition of macroprudential policy as "the use of primarily prudential tools to limit systemic risk" (see further IMF 2013 and IMF-FSB-BIS 2016).