3.2. Measuring economic conditions
To measure prior economic conditions we use standard macroeconomic aggregates (the raw data are in Table 3). We use the versions of these data published by two investment banks, J.P. Morgan (Emerging Markets: Economic Indicators, Dec. 5, 1997) and Goldman Sachs (Emerging Markets Biweekly, Dec. 10, 1997). Both of these organizations build their databases using the available information from national statistical offices and international organizations, most notably the IMF and the World Bank, but they also put a great deal of effort into ensuring that the data are comparable across countries. In addition, using these sources helps us examine whether information actually available to the financial markets before the crisis is useful in predicting the exchange rate. Following the suggestion of a referee, we fill gaps in these data using numbers from the World Bank and the IMF