This paper proposes an original and unified toolbox to evaluate financial crisis Early Warning Systems (EWS). It presents four main advantages. First, it is a model free method which can be used to asses the forecasts issued from different EWS (probit, logit, markov switching models, or combinations of models). Second, this toolbox can be applied to any type of crisis EWS (currency, banking, so...

This paper assesses the effect of the recent economic and sovereign debt crisis on credit demand and supply and the terms and conditions of bank financing for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across euro area countries. We combine firm micro data with real and financial macroeconomic variables to examine which factors are important for supply and which for demand. We find that real economic ...

Fluctuations in uncertainty can play an important role in shaping the economic conjuncture and outlook. This article discusses the various methods proposed in the literature to measure uncertainty and shows how these measures have evolved in the euro area. It describes the transmission channels of fluctuations in uncertainty to the economy and provides some model-based evidence for the impact o...