Ending Over-Lending: Assessing Systemic Risk with Debt to Cash Flow
30 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2015
There are 2 versions of this paper
Ending Over-Lending: Assessing Systemic Risk with Debt to Cash Flow
Ending Over-Lending: Assessing Systemic Risk with Debt to Cash Flow
Date Written: March 26, 2015
Abstract
This paper introduces the ratio of debt to cash flow (D/CF) of nations and their economic sectors to macroprudential analysis, particularly as an indicator of systemic risk and vulnerabilities. While leverage is oftentimes linked to the vulnerability of a nation, the stock of total debt and the flow of gross savings is a less explored measure. Cash flows certainly have a well-known connection to corporations' ability to service debt. This paper investigates whether the D/CF provides a means for understanding systemic risks. For a panel of 33 nations, we explore historic D/CF trends, and apply the same procedure to economic sectors. In terms of an early-warning indicator, we show that the D/CF ratio provides a useful additional measure of vulnerability to systemic banking and sovereign crises, relative to more conventional indicators. As a conceptual framework, the assessment of financial stability is arranged for presentation within four vulnerability zones, and exemplified with a number of illustrative case studies.
Keywords: debt to cash flow, total debt to gross savings, systemic risk, early-warning indicator
JEL Classification: E21, F34, G01, H63
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation