Optimal design of early warning systems for sovereign debt crises

This paper tackles the design of an optimal early warning system (EWS) for sovereign default from two distinct angles: the choice of the econometric methodology and the evaluation of the EWS itself. It compares K-means clustering of macrodata, a logit regression for macrodata, a logit regression for credit ratings, and the combined forecasts from all three methods. The optimal choice of forecast method is shown to depend on the desired trade-off between missed defaults and false alarms. Hence, it is crucial to account for the decision-maker's preferences which are characterized through a loss function and risk-aversion parameter. Recursive forecast combining generally yields a better balance of type I and type II errors than any of the individual forecasting methods, and outperforms the naïve predictions. © 2006 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: C15; C22; C52