As much as possible, we try to use specific criteria to classify episodes into categories. It is
therefore useful to describe the characteristics common to the various groupings briefly. The
hallmark of the episodes that we identify as credit disruptions is that the OECD perceived
financial-market problems or increases in the cost of credit intermediation that were important
enough to be mentioned, but that it did not believe were having significant macroeconomic
consequences. A common form for this to take was for the OECD to describe the problems not
as directly affecting its outlook for the country, but as posing a risk to the outlook. Other
possibilities are that the OECD viewed the problems as affecting only a narrow part of the
economy; that it mentioned them in passing or explicitly identified them as minor; or that it
described the financial system as improved but not fully healed following a situation that we
classify as a minor crisis. An example of a regular credit disruption occurred in Germany in
1974:2 (that is, the second half of 1974), where the OECD described “strains” in the banking
system and the extension of special credit facilities to help small and medium-sized companies
obtain credit