The "Great Trade Collapse" triggered by the 2008-09 crisis calls for a careful assessment of the trade losses from financial crises. We adopt a more detailed perspective by looking at the response of different types of trade (i.e. agricultural, mining, and manufactured goods, and services)...

Using a sample that covers more than 100 countries over the 2000-2017 period, we assess the impact of macroprudential policies on financial stability. In particular, we examine whether the activation of macroprudential policies is conducive to a lower incidence of systemic banking crises. Our...

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy response in 118 episodes of systemic banking crisis in advanced and emerging market countries during 1980-2008. It finds that timely countercyclical fiscal measures contribute to shortening the length of crisis episodes by stimulating aggregate...

Machine learning tools are well known for their success in prediction. But prediction is not causation, and causal discovery is at the core of most questions concerning economic policy. Recently, however, the literature has focused more on issues of causality. This paper gently introduces some...

We update the widely used banking crises database by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2010) with new information on recent and ongoing crises, including updated information on policy responses and outcomes (i.e. fiscal costs, output losses, and increases in public debt). We also update our dating of...

After a steady increase following the global financial crisis, private nonfinancial sector leverage rose further during the COVID-19 on the back of easy financial conditions induced by unprecedented policy support. We investigate the empirical relationships between increased leverage, financial...

This paper studies episodes in which aggregate bank credit contracts alongside expanding economic activity-credit reversals. Using data for 179 countries during 1960-2017, the paper finds that reversals are a relatively common phenomenon--on average, they occur every five years. By comparison,...

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...