Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS)
June 2018
What Macroeconomic Conditions Lead Financial Crises?
Abstract:
Research has suggested that a rapid pace of nonfinancial borrowing reliably precedes financial crises, placing the pace of debt growth at the center of frameworks for the deployment of macroprudential policies. I reconsider the role of asset-prices and current account deficits as leading indicators of financial crises. Run-ups in equity and house prices and a widening of the current account deficit have substantially larger (and more statistically-significant) effects than debt growth on the probability of a financial crisis in standard crisis-prediction models. The analysis highlights the value of graphs of predicted crisis probabilities in an assessment of predictors.
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Keywords: Current account, Debt, Equity prices, Financial crisis, House prices
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2018.038
PDF: Full Paper