Organisation

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Owning Institution:

University of New South Wales

Macquarie University

University of Technology Sydney

Government of Australia

Government of New South Wales

University of Sydney

University of Melbourne

Australian National University

The Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR) was a Centre of Excellence operating from 2011 to 2016 to address fundamental issues affecting the Australian financial industry. CIFR’s mission was to promote financial sector vibrancy, resilience and integrity, supporting Australia as a regional financial centre through leading research and education on systemic risk, market and regulatory performance and financial market developments. CIFR funded 71 research projects, involving well over 100 researchers from domestic and international universities.

For Australia’s financial industry, CIFR provided a strategic link between academia, policy-makers, regulators and other industry participants. Now closed, the Centre's output of 148 papers are all available at this publisher page.

Working paper

Are funds true to label? matching qualitative and quantitative information

30 Sep 2015

Zhe Chen,

David R. Gallagher,

Camille H. Schmidt

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Our contribution to funds management research is in matching qualitative information sourced from the fund manager with their own quantitative data concerning what assets they own, how they trade, and how their portfolios are managed. We find that survey responses are informative of characteristic values relative to other funds e.g. funds that declare higher maximum...

Working paper

How does financial literacy affect the savings decision?

30 Sep 2015

Paul Brockman,

David Michayluk

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Savings decisions are essential in reallocating income across periods but understanding this concept may be mired by low levels of financial literacy. We survey individuals to identify the role of financial literacy in savings rates. We note differences in financial literacy and savings rates between genders and across age groups and income levels. We show...

Working paper

Twin Peaks - The Legal and Regulatory Anatomy of Australia's System of Financial Regulation

31 Aug 2015

Andrew Godwin,

Ian Ramsay

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Australia adopts a functionally-based model – the ‘twin peaks’ model – under which the functions for financial regulation are consolidated into two regulators: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which is responsible for the regulation of companies, market conduct and consumer protection; and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which is responsible for prudential...

Working paper

The Impact of Pillar 3 Disclosures on Asymmetric Information and Liquidity in Bank Stocks: Multi-Country Evidence

31 Aug 2015

Jerry Parwarda,

Kathryn Lau,

Stefan Ruenzi

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Theory suggests that increasing the public availability of regulatory information may hurt the information environment of bank stocks. It is therefore not clear whether the Basel Accord’s intent to foster market discipline by requiring banks to publish information on their risk management practices and exposures is beneficial. Using a sample of the 54 largest banks...

Report

Competition in financial services

25 Aug 2015

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

In the financial services sector, the failure of a single institution can have a compounding effect on the sector, and on national and global economies. In particular, there is systemic risk from inter-institution lending, and this effect is more complex in Australia due to the small number of major players. In retail banking in Australia...