The financial stress index: identification of systemic risk conditions

This paper develops a financial stress index for the United States, the Cleveland Financial Stress Index (CFSI), which provides a continuous signal of financial stress and broad coverage of the areas that could indicate it. The index is based on daily public-market data collected from four sectors of the fi nancial markets—the credit, foreign exchange, equity, and interbank markets. A dynamic weighting method is employed to capture changes in the relative importance of these four sectors as they occur. In addition, the design of the index allows the origin of the stress to be identified. We compare the CFSI to alternative indexes, using a detailed benchmarking methodology, and show how the CFSI can be applied to systemic stress monitoring and early warning system design. To that end, we investigate alternative stress-signaling thresholds and frequency regimes and then establish optimal frequencies for filtering out market noise and idiosyncratic episodes. Finally, we quantify a powerful CFSI-based rating system that assigns a probability of systemic stress to ranges of CFSI outcomes.Systemic risk ; Risk assessment

SAFE: An early warning system for systemic banking risk

This paper builds on existing microprudential and macroprudential early warning systems (EWSs) to develop a new, hybrid class of models for systemic risk, incorporating the structural characteristics of the fi nancial system and a feedback amplification mechanism. The models explain fi nancial stress using both public and proprietary supervisory data from systemically important institutions, regressing institutional imbalances using an optimal lag method. The Systemic Assessment of Financial Environment (SAFE) EWS monitors microprudential information from the largest bank holding companies to anticipate the buildup of macroeconomic stresses in the financial markets. To mitigate inherent uncertainty, SAFE develops a set of medium-term forecasting specifi cations that gives policymakers enough time to take ex-ante policy action and a set of short-term forecasting specifications for verification and adjustment of supervisory actions. This paper highlights the application of these models to stress testing, scenario analysis, and policy.Systemic risk ; Liquidity (Economics)

The Financial Stress Index: Identification of Systemic Risk Conditions

This paper develops a financial stress measure for the United States, the Cleveland Financial Stress Index (CFSI). The index is based on publicly available data describing a six-market partition of the financial system comprising credit, funding, real estate, securitization, foreign exchange, and equity markets. This paper improves upon existing stress measures by objectively selecting between several index weighting methodologies across a variety of monitoring frequencies through comparison against a volatility-based benchmark series. The resulting measure facilitates the decomposition of stress to identify disruptions in specific markets and provides insight into historical stress regimes