Financial Imbalance Index as a New Early Warning Indicator: Methods and Applications in the Chinese Economy

Based on the stylized facts of financial crises and systemic risk accumulation, this paper constructs a new financial imbalance index (FII) from the perspective of endogenous financial cycles and assesses its application in China's macro-financial analysis. The results show that the FII is not only an effective index to detect financial imbalances in China's economic cycles, but is also more accurate than and plays more of a leading role than conventional indicators, such as the consumer price index, the financial conditions index and the purchasing managers indicator. Empirical analysis shows that the FII can be used as an effective indicator to measure systemic financial risk, and can provide policy-makers and market participants with useful information to make appropriate decisions.