Measuring systemic risk in China: a textual analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to construct an index for systemic risk in China.Design/methodology/approachThis paper develops a systemic risk index for China (SRIC) using textual information from 26 leading newspapers in China. Our index measures the systematic risk from 21 topics relating to China’s economy and provides narratives of the sources of systemic risk.FindingsSRIC effectively predicts changes in GDP, aggregate financing to the real economy and the purchasing managers’ index. Moreover, SRIC explains several other commonly used macroeconomic indicators. Our risk measure provides a helpful monitoring tool for policymakers to manage systemic risk.Originality/valueThe paper construct an index of systemic risk based on the information extracted from newspaper articles. This approach is new to the literature.