The unprecedented number of costly bank failures throughout the world in the last two decades of the twentieth century has focused attention on the need to determine more appropriate ways to improve the performance of countries financial systems. Indeed, a substantial literature is already emerging on the causes and consequences of banking -crises and on various reforms that might help prevent future crises- Although the proposed reforms differ in important respects, nearly all include changes in existing financial regulations and supervisory standars. This core of agreement is certainly undertandable, insofar as financial crises in countries ranging from the United States and Japan, to Korea and Mexico, to Chile and Thailand, to India and Russia and tho Ghana and Hungary have been blamed at least in part on 'bad' regulation and supervision.