Recently there has been growing interest in examining the potential short-term link between survey-based confidence indicators and real economic activity, notably for macroeconomic policy making. This paper builds on previous studies to establish whether there is a short-term predictive...

Given the magnitude of “global imbalances” in the run-up to the subprime crisis, we test for an impact of the current account balance on the probability of banking crises in OECD countries since 1980. This variable has been neglected in most early warning models to date, despite its...

Simple time series models looking for the effect of financial crises on output generally find that they reduce the sustainable level of output permanently. However, not all crises are the same, with some being caused by recessions and others causing or preceding recessions. Using a common...

In the wake of the subprime crisis, there has been widespread discussion of the disproportionate risks posed to the financial system by large banks that may consider themselves “too big to fail”. This has led in turn to suggestions that radical policies with the effect of reducing bank size...