This paper uses a Merton-type estimate of the probability of default (PoD) for the main banks in a sample of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and middle-income countries as a proxy for the fragility of their banking systems. Based on theory and stylized facts, the paper...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks' balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

We investigate the extent to which it is possible to detect asset-price booms and banking crises according to alternative identification strategies and we assess their robustness. We find some evidence that house price-booms are more likely to turn into costly recession or to trigger a banking...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks’ balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

Are specific developments in stock prices in line with fundamentals or do they reflect a rising bubble? And if the latter result applies, how is it possible to detect a bubble in real time? The answer to this question is of utmost relevance for a number of areas, not least for either financial...

The recent financial crisis has demonstrated in an impressive way that boom/bust cycles can have devastating effects on the real economy. This paper aims at contributing to the literature on early warning indicator exercises for asset price development. Using a sample of 17 industrialised OECD...

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks' balance sheets doubled in the course of the 20th century, driven by a sharp rise of...

This paper proposes a measure of real-time inflation expectations based on metadata, i.e., data about data, constructed from internet search queries performed on the search engine Google. The forecasting performance of the Google Inflation Search Index (GISI) is assessed relative to 37 other...

For decades, the academic literature has focused on three survey measures of expected inflation: the Livingston Survey, the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the Michigan Survey. While these measures have been useful in developing models of forecasting inflation, the data are low frequency...

We apply recently developed early warning indicator systems to a cross-section of emerging markets. We find that, with little or no modification, models designed to predict asset price booms/busts in advanced countries may be useful for emerging markets. The concept of monitoring a set of asset...