Can the upturns and downturns in financial variables serve as early warning indicators of banking crises? Using data from 59 advanced and emerging economies, we show that financial overheating can be detected in real time. Equity prices and output gap are the best leading indicators in advanced...

We construct a Financial Conditions Index (FCI) for Greece as a surveillance tool to quantify the degree of the stress in the financial sector. We use principal component analysis to capture the information content of several financial indicators through a single index. We also construct an...

This study finds that equity returns in the banking sector in the wake of the Great Recession and the European sovereign debt crisis have been driven mainly by weak growth prospects and heightened sovereign risk and to a lesser extent, by deteriorating funding conditions and investor sentiment....

This paper compares three types of early warning indicators of financial instability – those based on financial market prices, those based on normalized measures of total credit and those based on liabilities of financial intermediaries. Prices perform well as concurrent indicators of market...

Early warning systems (EWS) are widely used for assessing countries' vulnerability to fiscal distress. Most EWS employ a specific set of only fiscal leading indicators predetermined by the researchers, which casts doubt on their robustness. We revisit this issue by using the Extreme Bound...

The global financial crisis has reignited interest in models of crisis prediction. It has also raised the question whether financial connectedness - a possible source of systemic risk - can serve as an early warning indicator of crises. In this paper we examine the ability of connectedness in...

Should policymakers wait for fiscal crisis early warning signals before repairing the roof? We give an answer to this question by investigating the interlinkages between early warning signals for fiscal crisis, policy responses, and policy outcomes, using a broad panel of 119 countries. We find...

Better “financial soundness” of banks could help mitigate the volatility of financial cycles by reducing banks' risk exposure. But trying to improve financial soundness in the midst of a downturn can do the opposite—further aggravating the contraction of credit. Consistent with this...

This study investigates the impact of the current financial crisis on Canada's potential GDP growth. Using a simple accounting framework to decompose trend GDP growth into changes in capital, labor services and total factor productivity, we find a sizeable drop in Canadian potential growth in...

The paper discusses the fiscal impact of the Great Recession of 2007-08 on state and local governments in the United States. It documents the sharp decline in tax revenue and discusses how states responded to close the budget gaps in order to obey the balanced budget provisions. It highligts the...