Against the background of the acknowledged importance of off-balance-sheet exposures in the sub prime crisis, we seek to investigate whether this was a new phenomenon or common to earlier crises. Using a logit approach to predicting banking crises in 14 OECD countries we find a significant...

Despite the extensive literature on prediction of banking crises by Early Warning Systems (EWSs), their practical use by policy makers is limited, even in the international financial institutions. This is a paradox since the changing nature of banking risks as more economies liberalise and...