An International Monetary Fund paper, published on Monday, looks at a new index that measures overall financial conditions in Asia.

Carolina Osorio, Runchana Pongsaparn and Filiz Unsal, the paper's authors, propose a financial condition index (FCI) for Asian economies based on two different methodologies: a vector-autoregression model and a dynamic factor model. The authors say the index benefits from an ability to forecast growth of gross domestic product, which may be used as a leading