Predicting US bank failures with internet search volume data

This study investigates how well weekly Google search volumes track and predict bank failures in the United States between 2007 and 2012, contributing to the expanding literature that exploits internet data for the prediction of events. Different duration models with time-varying covariates are estimated. Higher Google search volumes go hand in hand with higher failure rates, and the coefficients for the Google volume growth index are highly significant. However, Google's predictive power quickly dissipates for future failure rates.