We estimate new indices measuring financial and economic (in)stability in Austria and in the euro area. Instead of estimating the level of (in)stability in a financial or economic system we measure the degree of predictability of (in)stability, where our methodological approach is based on the...

Financial crises pose unique challenges for forecast accuracy. Using the IMF's Monitoring of Fund Arrangement (MONA) database, we conduct the most comprehensive evaluation of IMF forecasts to date for countries in times of crises. We examine 29 macroeconomic variables in terms of bias,...

We develop the concept of "dragon-kings'' corresponding to meaningful outliers, which are found to coexist with power laws in the distributions of event sizes under a broad range of conditions in a large variety of systems. These dragon-kings reveal the existence of mechanisms of...

The European debt crisis has revealed serious deficiencies and risks on a proper functioning of the monetary union. Against this backdrop, early warning systems are of crucial importance. In this study that focuses on euro area member states, the robustness of early warning systems to predict...

Predicting panic is of critical importance in many areas of human and animal behavior, notably in the context of economics. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. Panic may be due to a specific external threat, or self-generated nervousness. Here we show that the recent economic crisis...