Predictable Financial Crises

There is a long-standing debate on whether financial crises can be predicted. This column draws on a chronology of past financial crises and data on credit and asset prices for a panel of 42 countries between 1950-2016 and finds that if there is a large credit expansion with an asset price boom, then financial crises are highly predictable. These results are used to motivate a simple indicator that identifies periods of potential credit-market overheating. The indicator is shown to predict past crises in advance, suggesting that policymakers have time to act and take prophylactic policy interventions.