Outright bank failures without prior indication of financial instability are very rare. Supervisory authorities monitor banks constantly. Thus, they usually obtain early warning signals that precede ultimate failure and, in fact, banks can be regarded as troubled to varying degrees before...

We measure country welfare by an index number calculated from welfare components like GDP per capita and expected length of life. We rank countries from high to low welfare using such estimated welfare indices. In such calculation the chosen welfare components, the procedures used to normalize...