Inaction inMacro-prudential Supervision: Assessing the EU’s Response

摘要

In the macro-prudential literature, ‘inaction bias’ describes the supposed tendency ofmacro-prudential actors to favour inaction over actionwhen considering the use ofmacroprudentialtools.While inactionbias is a topicofmuch interest inmacro-prudential policycircles, it has received scant attention from legal scholarship. The aim of this article is tocontribute to filling this gap by studying inaction in an EUmacro-prudential context andby evaluating the institutional arrangements that were put in place in order to address socalledinaction bias. Several actors at the EU level have a role to play in macro-prudentialsupervision, especially the European SystemicRisk Board and the EuropeanCentral Bank(ECB).This paperwill assess their capabilities and their capacity to turn these into actions.The role of the ECB will be of particular interest since it was vested with real powers toaddress possible inaction bias among states participating in the Banking Union. Amongother things, I will examine whether the ECB’s macro-prudential powers are the cure tothe problems that are said to underpin inaction bias at the national level.