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Mind the Basel gap

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  • Jylhä, Petri
  • Lof, Matthijs

Abstract

The Basel credit gap, the difference between a country’s credit-to-GDP ratio and its estimated long-term trend, is used as a basis for setting countercyclical capital buffers under the Basel III regulatory framework. Using international data from the BIS, we show that the Basel credit gap, estimated by a one-sided HP filter, is nearly equivalent to a naive 16-quarter change in the credit-to-GDP ratio and performs equally well in terms of predicting banking crises. We demonstrate that the near-equivalence between deviations from trend and simple changes occurs when the one-sided HP filter is applied to a unit-root process. The goal of this paper is not to evaluate the performance of the Basel credit gap as an early-warning-indicator, but rather to demonstrate that its estimation method is unnecessarily complicated.

Suggested Citation

  • Jylhä, Petri & Lof, Matthijs, 2022. "Mind the Basel gap," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfin:v:79:y:2022:i:c:s1042443122000841
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intfin.2022.101605
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit gap; One-sided Hodrick–Prescott filter; Systemic risk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

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