Main Papers, Blogposts and Indicators Chapter Resilience in a time of high debt, PDF (2017) BlogPost Should we worry about high household and corporate debt? Policy Paper Strengthening economic resilience: Insights from the post-1970 record of severe recessions and financial crises, PDF (2016)  | Read the blogPost    Vulnerability indicators, Excel (updated June 2017)     Related research: > Finance and inclusive growth: How to restore a healthy financial sector that supports long-lasting, inclusive growth? > Investment policy: Review of the OECD Code of Liberalisation of Capital Movements

Background Papers

Can Reforms Promoting Growth Increase Financial Fragility? An Empirical Assessment (2016)

How do policies influence GDP tail risks? (2016)

Advance warning indicators of past severe GDP per capita recessions in Turkey (2016)

Economic Resilience: A New Set of Vulnerability Indicators for OECD Countries (2015)

Economic Resilience: The Usefulness of Early Warning Indicators in OECD Countries (2015)

Economic Resilience: What Role for Policies? (2015)

 

Severe recessions and financial crises are frequent

Their effect on the economy is persistent and it often exceeds initial projections.

It is important that measures be taken to minimise the risk of such events

Economic resilience can be strengthened by implementing policies aimed at mitigating both the risks and consequences of severe crises.  In the case of risks this implies being able to monitor home-grown vulnerabilities;  coping with the consequences means identifying policy settings and mechanisms that can be put in place ex ante so as to help absorbing the impact of a severe downturn.

However, the benefits of such policies need to be balanced against their costs in terms of the lower growth 

When risk-mitigating measures involve a trade-off between growth and crisis risk, the most cost-effective actions need to be identified, spanning both macroeconomic and structural policies.

 Economic policies in a growth and fragility framework

 

 

Note: The X axis plots the effect of policies on fragility; fragility is defined as higher likelihood of a financial crisis (policies with red outline) or a higher GDP (negative) tail risk.  Three types of financial crises are considered:  currency, banking and twin crises.  Tail risk is defined as the effect of a policy variable on the bottom 10% of the distribution for quarterly GDP growth. The chart reports coefficients corresponding either to elasticities or marginal effects, depending on the policy considered. Institutional quality indicators are associated with both growth and lower fragility; labour and product market policies generally affect growth, with little or no impact economic risk. Growth fragility trade-offs exist when considering macro prudential and financial markets policies. The yellow dot under the green area (Quality of institutions) represents the effect on growth and fragility of a free-floating exchange rate, while the one under the light blue area (Labour market) represents automatic stabilisers.

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VoxEU OECD Insights World Economic Forum	Vulnerability indicators, Excel (updated June 2017)	For more information, please contact Alain de Serres