文档介绍:Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
International Finance Discussion Papers
Number 629
October 1998
Currency and Banking Crises: The Early Warnings of Distress
Graciela L. Kaminsky
NOTE: International Finance Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stim-
ulate discussion and ment. References in publications to International Finance
Discussion Papers (other than an acknowledgment that the writer has had access to unpub-
lished material) should be cleared with the author or authors. Recent IFDPs are available
on the Web at .us
Currency and Banking Crises: The Early Warnings of Distress
Graciela L. Kaminsky1
Abstract: The abruptness and virulence of the 1997 Asian crises have led many to claim that
these crises are of a new breed and thus they were unforecastable. This paper examines 102
financial crises in 20 countries and concludes that the Asian crises are not of a new variety.
Overall, the 1997 Asian crises, as well as previous crises in other regions, occur when the
economies are in distress, making the degree of fragility of the economy a useful indicator of
future crises. Based on this idea, the paper proposes posite leading indicators
of crises, which are evaluated in terms of accuracy both in-sample and out-of-sample.
Keywords: Banking and Currency crises, early warnings, predicting crises.
1 The author is professor of Economics at e Washington University. This paper was written while
the author was a staff economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The views in this
paper are solely the responsibility of the author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or of any other person associated with the Federal Reserve
System. The paper was written for the Asia Financial Crisis anized by the Federal Reserve
Bank of Chicago and the International ary Fund, October 8-10, 1998. I have benefited from insightful
discuss