The decade since the Global Crisis has seen notable changes in the architecture of supervision, with separation of responsibility for monetary and financial stability having been reversed in many countries on the one hand, and a move towards more cross-border cooperation between supervisors on the other. This column discusses these two trends in Europe, where responsibility for supervision of the largest banks is housed in the same authority with responsibility for monetary policy, the ECB. It argues that the Single Supervisory Mechanism is a good reflection of the subtle economics of supervisory architecture and the many trade-offs that have to be taken into account.
