This paper develops a theory of the credit cycle to account for recent evidence that capital is increasingly allocated to inefficiently risky projects over the course of the boom. The model features lenders who sell risk exposure to non-lender investors in order to relax borrowing constraints,...

The paper uses the Self-Organizing Map for mapping the state of financial stability and visualizing the sources of systemic risks as well as for predicting systemic financial crises. The Self-Organizing Financial Stability Map (SOFSM) enables a two-dimensional representation of a...

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...

This paper develops a framework for assessing systemic risks and for predicting (out-of-sample) systemic events, i.e. periods of extreme financial instability with potential real costs. We test the ability of a wide range of "stand alone" and composite indicators in predicting systemic events...

Recent research developed under the ECB research task force on Monetary Policy, Macroprudential Policy and Financial Stability highlights the existence of trade-offs and spillovers that monetary policy and macroprudential authorities face when deciding on their policy interventions, Monetary...

We develop early warning models for financial crisis prediction by applying machine learning techniques to macrofinancial data for 17 countries over 1870–2016. Most nonlin-ear machine learning models outperform logistic regression in out-of-sample predictions and forecasting. We identify...

We study the interaction between borrowers' and banks' solvency in a quantitative macroeconomic model with financial frictions in which bank assets are a portfolio of defaultable loans. We show that ex-ante imperfect diversification of bank lending generates bank asset returns with limited...

I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

In this paper we propose a composite indicator that measures multidimensional sovereign bond market stress in the euro area as a whole and in individual euro area member states. It integrates measures of credit risk, volatility and liquidity at short-term and long-term bond maturities into a...

This paper uses a unique dataset where credit rejections experienced by euro area firms are matched with firm and bank characteristics. This allows us to study simultaneously the role that bank and firm weakness had in the credit reduction observed in the euro area during the sovereign debt...