Since the authors culled these indicators from papers that covered a wide cross section of countries, the indicators can be considered to be a common or core set. No doubt individual economies have unique characteristics and require the addition of other specific indicators or the removal of non-relevant ones. For instance, commodity prices may be important in the case of some countries, for example, oil prices for oil-producing countries, or the stock market may be inconsequential in other economies and therefore changes in stock prices would be dropped. Individual economies may have to conduct their own studies to modify the list. It should also be noted that several of the indicators have not really been tested very rigorously in that they have been used in only one study.
Economic theory can also suggest possible indicators.
This list has the advantage of being easier to monitor and digest. It is skewed towards the external accounts, especially foreign debt, but the other components, such as budget deficit, savings rate and current account deficit to GDP, are sufficiently broad to catch domestic stress factors. In the light of the Asian crisis, additional indicators could focus on the financial solvency and liquidity of the banking system and corporations. A recent paper 21 suggests that the main warning indicators in the case of Asia are variables which proxy the vulnerability of the banking and corporate sector. Such a classification could be most useful to policy makers.