Panicos Demetriades, David Fielding, Johan Rewilak — A new international database on financial fragility

There is a pressing need to understand the characteristics of financial systems that are vulnerable to crises, and the mechanisms through which crises are initiated and propagated. To address such a need, this column presents a new international database on financial fragility for 124 countries between 1998 and 2012. The novelties and main features of the databases are also highlighted.…

More generally, it is intended that this dataset will be used both for academic research and to inform policymaking. Analysis of the dataset might shed new light on questions such as how financial fragility influences economic growth, whether countries that liberalise their financial systems too quickly become more vulnerable to financial fragility, and whether there are indicators of fragility that can be used for predicting financial crises. Moreover, it can be used to examine questions relating to the weak, if not entirely absent, finance-growth link in low-income countries.

Data.

VOXEU
A new international database on financial fragility
Panicos Demetriades, David Fielding, Johan Rewilak