Designing an early warning system for currency crises: an empirical treatment

Abstract

This article investigates the predictive power of qualitative response models that can serve as the basis for an early warning system for currency crises. It employs a signals framework that monitors the behaviour of key economic variables and issues a warning when their values exceed certain critical levels. The analysis is carried out for a parsimonious specification with high-frequency data. Taking Egypt as a case study, it is shown that this class of probability models captures to a good extent the turbulence in the foreign exchange market and the onset of crises.