We update the widely used banking crises database by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2010) with new information on recent and ongoing crises, including updated information on policy responses and outcomes (i.e. fiscal costs, output losses, and increases in public debt). We also update our dating of...

This paper investigates whether developing and emerging market countries can implement monetary policies similar to those used by advanced countries during the recent global crisis - injecting significant amounts of money into the financial system without facing major short-run adverse...

This paper analyzes the behavior of closed-end country fund discounts, including evidence from the Mexican and East Asian crises. We find that the ratio of fund prices to their fundamental value increases dramatically during a crisis, an anomaly that we denote the “closed-end country fund...

To better fulfill its crisis-prevention mandate, IMF surveillance needs to provide stronger incentives for countries to follow good policies and for markets to avoid boom-bust cycles in capital flows. To this end, surveillance should culminate in a summary public assessment of the quality of a...

We update the widely used banking crises database by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2010) with new information on recent and ongoing crises, including updated information on policy responses and outcomes (i.e. fiscal costs, output losses, and increases in public debt). We also update our dating of...

The paper seeks to identify common characteristics among a variety of macroeconomic and financial variables for a large sample of currency crises in industrial countries and emerging market economies. It covers crises which culminated in large currency depreciation as well as those in which...

The abruptness and virulence of the 1997 Asian crises have led many to claim that these crises are of a new breed and were thus 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,...

To complement the early warning signals literature, we study the determinants of banking and currency crises for small states and currency boards. Building on the crisis dataset by Laeven and Valencia (2020), we estimate a binominal logit model to identify the determinants of crises, and as a...

In this paper I assess the ability of econometric and machine learning techniques to predict fiscal crises out of sample. I show that the econometric approaches used in many policy applications cannot outperform a simple heuristic rule of thumb. Machine learning techniques (elastic net, random...

Building on the vast literature, this paper focuses on the role of the structure of the international investment position (IIP) in affecting countries' external vulnerabilities. Using a sample of 73 advanced and emerging economies and new database on the IIP's currency composition, we find that...