Volatility clustering and fat tails are prominently observed in financial markets. Here, we analyze the underlying mechanisms of three agent-based models explaining these stylized facts in terms of market instabilities and compare them on empirical grounds. To this end, we first develop a...

This paper predicts downside risks to future real house price growth (house-prices-at-risk or HaR) in 32 advanced and emerging market economies. Through a macro-model and predictive quantile regressions, we show that current house price overvaluation, excessive credit growth, and tighter...

Detecting and measuring financial stress and its systemic risk channels have been one of the main concerns for authorities and financial supervisors especially after the financial crisis from 2008. In this paper, we aim to build a financial stress index (FSI) for Romania using monthly data from...

Violation of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) in a specific market may lead to construction of bubbles which is a signal of inefficiencies. Although speculative bubbles soon decay, if they exist for a long time, they will lead to financial crises. Early warning systems (EWSs) are designed...

In recent years, Fund staff has prepared cross-country analyses of macroeconomic vulnerabilities in low-income countries, focusing on the risk of sharp declines in economic growth and of debt distress. We discuss routes to broadening this focus by adding several macroeconomic and macrofinancial...

This study develops an early warning signal (EWS) of government debt crisis using a panel data consisting of 43 developing countries over the period of 1960 to 2017. It employs two different methods: the noise to signal ratio to capture the signaling power of individual indicators; and the...