Money market pressure and the determinants of baning crises

Identifying banking crises is the first step in the research on determinants of banking crises. The prevailing practice is to employ market events to identify a banking crisis. Researchers justify the usage of this method on the grounds that either direct and reliable indicators of banks’ assets quality are not available, or that withdrawals of bank deposits are no longer a part of financial crises in a modern financial system with deposits insurance. Meanwhile, most researchers also admit that there are inherent inconsistency and arbitrariness associated with the events method. This paper develops an index of money market pressure to identify banking crises. We define banking crises as periods in which there is excessive demand for liquidity in the money market. We begin with the theoretical foundation of this new method and show that it is desirable, and also possible, to depend on a more objective index of money market pressure rather than market events to identify banking crises. This approach allows one to employ high frequency data in regression, and avoid the ambiguity problem in interpreting the direction of causality that most banking literature suffers. Comparing the crises dates with existing research indicates that the new method is able to identify banking crises more accurately than the events method. The two components of the index, changes in central bank funds to bank deposits ratio and changes in short-term real interest rate, are equally important in the identification of banking crises. Bank deposits, combined with central bank funds, provide valuable information on banking distress. With the newly defined crisis episodes, we examine the determinants of banking crises using data complied from 47 countries. We estimate conditional logit models that include macroeconomic, financial, and institutional variables in the explanatory variables. The results display similarities to and differences with existing research. We find that slowdown of real GDP, lower real interest rates, extremely high inflation, large fiscal deficits, and over-valued exchange rates tend to precede banking crises. The effects of monetary base growth on the probability of banking crises are negligible. --

Vertical Heterophoria and Postural Control in Nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain

The purpose of this study was to test postural control during quiet standing in nonspecific chronic low back pain (LBP) subjects with vertical heterophoria (VH) before and after cancellation of VH; also to compare with healthy subjects with, and without VH. Fourteen subjects with LBP took part in this study. The postural performance was measured through the center of pressure displacements with a force platform while the subjects fixated on a target placed at either 40 or 200 cm, before and after VH cancellation with an appropriate prism. Their postural performance was compared to that of 14 healthy subjects with VH and 12 without VH (i.e. vertical orthophoria) studied previously in similar conditions. For LBP subjects, cancellation of VH with a prism improved postural performance. With respect to control subjects (with or without VH), the variance of speed of the center of pressure was higher, suggesting more energy was needed to stabilize their posture in quiet upright stance. Similarly to controls, LBP subjects showed higher postural sway when they were looking at a target at a far distance than at a close distance. The most important finding is that LBP subjects with VH can improve their performance after prism-cancellation of their VH. We suggest that VH reflects mild conflict between sensory and motor inputs involved in postural control i.e. a non optimal integration of the various signals. This could affect the performance of postural control and perhaps lead to pain. Nonspecific chronic back pain may results from such prolonged conflict

Money Market Pressure and the Determinants of Banking Crises

Identifying banking crises is the first step in the research on determinants of banking crises. The prevailing practice is to employ market events to identify a banking crisis. Researchers justify the usage of this method on the grounds that either direct and reliable indicators of banks’ assets quality are not available, or that withdrawals of bank deposits are no longer a part of financial crises in a modern financial system with deposits insurance. Meanwhile, most researchers also admit that there are inherent inconsistency and arbitrariness associated with the events method. This paper develops an index of money market pressure to identify banking crises. We define banking crises as periods in which there is excessive demand for liquidity in the money market. We begin with the theoretical foundation of this new method and show that it is desirable, and also possible, to depend on a more objective index of money market pressure rather than market events to identify banking crises. This approach allows one to employ high frequency data in regression, and avoid the ambiguity problem in interpreting the direction of causality that most banking literature suffers. Comparing the crises dates with existing research indicates that the new method is able to identify banking crises more accurately than the events method. The two components of the index, changes in central bank funds to bank deposits ratio and changes in short-term real interest rate, are equally important in the identification of banking crises. Bank deposits, combined with central bank funds, provide valuable information on banking distress. With the newly defined crisis episodes, we examine the determinants of banking crises using data complied from 47 countries. We estimate conditional logit models that include macroeconomic, financial, and institutional variables in the explanatory variables. The results display similarities to and differences with existing research. We find that slowdown of real GDP, lower real interest rates, extremely high inflation, large fiscal deficits, and over-valued exchange rates tend to precede banking crises. The effects of monetary base growth on the probability of banking crises are negligible.conditional logit model; events method; identification of banking crises; index of money market pressure