Based on a thorough analysis of the BIS Annual Reports from the early 1970s to the late 2010s, this chapter traces the evolution of the BIS’s thinking on the international monetary and financial system. It demonstrates how – as a result of the growth of the Eurocurrency markets in the 1970s and of the sovereign debt crisis of the 1980s – the BIS’s traditional focus on exchange rates and their potential impact on monetary stability gradually shifted to global capital flows and to the risks posed by an increasingly complex and interconnected banking system. The 1995 Mexico crisis and 1997–8 Asian crisis reinforced this shift and led to an overriding concern with the procyclicality of the financial system as a potential threat to financial stability. While recognising that the focus of the BIS on a macro-financial stability framework has contributed a lot to advancing the work of the Basel-based committees and standard-setting bodies, the chapter also concludes that not much progress has been made in coordinating monetary policies or in addressing the fundamental problem of excessive elasticity of the financial system.

This chapter discusses the contribution of BIS research to the shift in the way financial stability issues have been looked at before and after the great financial crisis of 2007–9. It also considers the policy implications for the post-crisis reforms. The 1997–8 Asian crisis was an important turning point, focusing BIS research on the endogenous causes of financial instability and thus on the resilience and the risks of the financial system as a whole. From the late 1990s, the BIS started advocating a macroprudential approach to financial stability, including the adoption of countercyclical macroprudential policies. These ideas, while being shared by some academics and central banks, were largely ignored in policy circles, including in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The chapter argues that the great financial crisis of 2007–9 catapulted these same ideas to the top of the reform agenda. Work done previously by the BIS and others, i.a. on the issue of countercyclical capital buffers, could be leveraged and find its way on the reform agenda pushed by the Financial Stability Board and the G20. The ‘measured contrarianism‘ of the BIS in this area thus added real value.