Model methodsMacro-financial conditionsactive

Credit impulse

The quarter-on-quarter second difference of the BIS private-sector credit-to-GDP ratio for nine economies.

Registry slug:: credit-impulse
Visible surface:: /conditions

Data and implementation

Vintage

2,236 quarterly observations for 9 economies from 1948-06-30 through 2025-12-31, measured 2026-08-30

Data tables

data/parquet/conditions_series.parquet
data/parquet/bis_credit_gap.parquet

Engine

engine/finweave_engine/layers/macro/credit_impulse.py

Producer

scripts/build_conditions.py

Outputs

data/parquet/conditions_series.parquet

Source: Bank for International Settlements, total credit and credit-to-GDP gaps

Method

The engine forms credit divided by GDP, differences that ratio once to obtain its quarter-on-quarter flow, and differences the flow again. The producer passes the BIS private non-financial-sector credit-to-GDP ratio as credit and a constant one as GDP, so the published value is exactly the ratio's quarter-on-quarter second difference.

This is a broad credit-to-GDP acceleration measure. It is not a smoothed bank-credit flow and it does not reproduce the original year-on-year Biggs-Mayer-Pick construction.

Methodology evidence

Path and lines	Evidence
engine/finweave_engine/layers/macro/credit_impulse.py:11-31	compute_credit_impulse() computes the first and second differences of the credit-to-GDP ratio.
docs/conditions_methodology.md:171-202	Defines this build's raw quarter-on-quarter second difference and distinguishes it from the original smoothed bank-credit-flow construction.

Equations

Credit ratioratio = credit / GDP

Credit flowflow = ratio.diff()

Credit impulseimpulse = flow.diff()

Validation

The output contains 2,236 credit-impulse observations for 9 economies from 1948-06-30 through 2025-12-31.
The producer drives the same engine function for every economy with the BIS ratio and a constant denominator, making the stored measure's second-difference interpretation explicit.

Limitations

Raw quarter-on-quarter second differences are noisy; turning points carry more meaning than isolated quarterly extrema.
The input is broad BIS total credit to the private non-financial sector, not bank lending alone.
The reversal after the 2020 credit spike is partly mechanical and should not be read by itself as a crisis signal.

References

Biggs, Mayer, and Pick (2010), Credit and Economic Recovery: Demystifying Phoenix Miracles.

Metadata endpoint

Path	Method	Returns	Example
/api/methods/[slug]	GET	Registry metadata, implementation paths, measured vintage, methodology evidence, validation, and limitations. No model observations or parquet contents.	/api/methods/credit-impulse