This paper represents an econometric attempt to deal with the issue of financial system stability in a framework of duration models, using macroeconomic data. A salient result is that banking crises are likely to occur every 10 years or so, even if the financial system has been stable until the year before the crises. Indeed, the risk of banking crises builds up during a calm period. The results also reveal that factors such as fundamentals weakness, structural characteristics, contagion phenomenon and past experiences with banking crises play an important role.