Macroprudential Policy after the Crisis: Forging a Thor’s Hammer for Financial Stability in Iceland By Kristin J. Forbes* Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of International Economics and Management MIT-Sloan School of Management, NBER and CEPR June 3, 2018 Report prepared at the request of the Task Force dedicated to reviewing monetary and currency policies for Iceland** Acknowledgements: This report benefits from conversations with members of the Task Force**, people from various institutions within Iceland, and experts on Iceland and/or macroprudential policy from outside the country. Please see Appendix A for a list of people to whom I spoke at some point in the preparation of this report and to whom I am grateful for their time and insights. I am particularly grateful to members of the Task Force and Harpa Jónsdóttir for answering my many questions. Further thanks to staff at the Central Bank of Iceland for comments on an earlier draft of this report. All views in this report, however, are my own and do not necessarily reflect the comments from these discussions or the views of anyone with whom I have spoken. * The author can be contacted at
[email protected] ** For information on the task force, see: https://www.ministryoffinance.is/news/iceland-lifts-capital-controls. The members of the Task Force are: Mr. Ásgeir Jónsson, Mr. Illugi Gunnarsson, Ms. Ásdis Kristjánsdóttir. I. Introduction In Norse mythology, the god Thor wielded a fearsome hammer named Mjölnir—a tool that created thunder when struck and was critical to Thor’s victories over his many rivals.