This paper provides an early warning indicator for bubbles in financial markets. The indicator is based on traditional unit root tests, more precisely on the augmented Dickey-Fuller test and may be used in a repeated manner with rolling samples. The performance of the indicator is tested...

To promote the financial stability, there is a need for an early warning system to signal the formation of asset price misalignments. This research provides two novel methods to accomplish this task. Results in this research shows that the conventional unit root tests in modified forms can be...

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...

I propose a financial stress index (FSI) for the Finnish financial system that aims to reflect the functionality of the financial system and provide an aggregate measure of financial stress in the money, bond, equity and foreign exchange markets and the banking sector. The FSI is a composite...

The current financial crisis, which has lasted almost one and a half years, is the 19th such crisis in the post-war period in advanced economies. Recent literature classifies the Nordic crises in Norway, Sweden and Finland in late 1980's and early 1990’s among the Big Five crises that have...

This study uses the current financial crisis as a quasi-experiment to examine whether and to what extent corporate boards affect the performance of firms. Using cumulative stock returns over the crisis to measure of firm performance, we find that board independence, as traditionally defined,...

In this article we provide a summary of empirical results obtained in several economics and operations research papers that attempt to explain, predict, or suggest remedies for financial crises or banking defaults, as well as outlines of the methodologies used. We analyze financial and economic...

Building on the work of Sorge and Virolainen (2006), we revisit the data on aggregate Finnish bank loan losses from the corporate sector, which covers the ‘Big Five’ crisis in Finland in the early 1990s. Several extensions to the empirical model are considered. These extensions are then used...

Using the maximum entropy method, this paper estimates the danger of contagion in the Finnish interbank market in 2005–2007 as well as the existence of contagion during a Finnish banking crisis. The contagion analysis of the early 1990s is able to predict the most troublesome and defaulting...