This paper presents first steps toward robust early-warning models. We conduct a horse race of conventional statistical methods and more recent machine learning methods. As early-warning models based upon one approach are oftentimes built in isolation of other methods, the exercise is of high...

This paper investigates leading indicators of systemic banking crises in a panel of 11 EU countries, with a particular focus on Finland. We use quarterly data from 1980Q1 to 2013Q2, in order to create a large number of macro-financial indicators, as well as their various transformations. We make...

It is well understood that investment serves as a shock absorber at the time of crisis. The duration of the drag on investment, however, is perplexing. For the nine Asian economies we focus on in this study, average investment/GDP is about 6 percentage points lower during 1998-2012 than its...

This Paper develops a test of contagion in financial markets based on bivariate correlation analysis, which generalizes existing tests, and applies it to the international effects of the Hong Kong stock market crisis of October 1997. Contagion is defined as a structural break in the...

The prospective normalisation of monetary policies in the main OECD areas will be challenging given that current policy rates are likely to be significantly below neutral levels and that central bank balance sheets will be above the pre-crisis levels by a wide margin. Monetary policy...

The German banking system came under pressure during the financial crisis, not least due to its significant exposure to toxic assets which originated in the US. In the short run, the stability of the system has been achieved, in large part through substantial government support measures....

This paper makes a case that the global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both have their origins in economic policies followed in a number of countries in the 2000s and in distortions that influenced the transmission of these policies...

This paper analyzes the joint behavior of international capital flows by foreign and domestic agents--gross capital flows--over the business cycle and during financial crises. We show that gross capital flows are very large and volatile, especially relative to net capital flows. When foreigners...

This paper investigates the role of credit in shaping economic recoveries and tries to shed some light on the phenomenon of creditless recoveries using industry-level data for a large sample of countries. We find that while a failure of the credit stock to recover to its pre-crisis level does...

Macroeconomic models of equity returns perform poorly. The proportion of daily index returns that these models explain is essentially zero. Instead of relying on macroeconomic determinants, our model includes a concept from microstructure order flow. Order flow is the proximate determinant of...