Contagion and Stability in Financial Networks

We consider a model of contagion in financial networks recently introduced in the literature, and we characterize the effect of a few features empirically observed in real networks on the stability of the system. Notably, we consider the effect of heterogeneous degree distributions, heterogeneous balance sheet size and degree correlations between banks. We study the probability of contagion conditional on the failure of a random bank, the most connected bank and the biggest b...

This work explores the characteristics of financial contagion in networks whose links distributions approaches a power law, using a model that defines banks balance sheets from information of network connectivity. By varying the parameters for the creation of the network, several interbank networks are built, in which the concentrations of debts and credits are obtained from links distributions during the creation networks process. Three main types of interbank network are an...

The aim of this paper is to quantify and manage systemic risk caused by default contagion in the interbank market. We model the market as a random directed network, where the vertices represent financial institutions and the weighted edges monetary exposures between them. Our model captures the strong degree of heterogeneity observed in empirical data and the parameters can easily be fitted to real data sets. One of our main results allows us to determine the impact of local ...

The question of how to stabilize financial systems has attracted considerable attention since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. Recently, Beale et al. ("Individual versus systemic risk and the regulator's dilemma", Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108: 12647-12652, 2011) demonstrated that higher portfolio diversity among banks would reduce systemic risk by decreasing the risk of simultaneous defaults at the expense of a higher likelihood of individual defaults. In practice, how...

This study presents an ANWSER model (asset network systemic risk model) to quantify the risk of financial contagion which manifests itself in a financial crisis. The transmission of financial distress is governed by a heterogeneous bank credit network and an investment portfolio of banks. Bankruptcy reproductive ratio of a financial system is computed as a function of the diversity and risk exposure of an investment portfolio of banks, and the denseness and concentration of a...

We consider a model of financial contagion in a bipartite network of assets and banks recently introduced in the literature, and we study the effect of power law distributions of degree and balance-sheet size on the stability of the system. Relative to the benchmark case of banks with homogeneous degrees and balance-sheet sizes, we find that if banks have a power-law degree distribution the system becomes less robust with respect to the initial failure of a random bank, and t...

The latest financial crisis has painfully revealed the dangers arising from a globally interconnected financial system. Conventional approaches based on the notion of the existence of equilibrium and those which rely on statistical forecasting have seen to be inadequate to describe financial systems in any reasonable way. A more natural approach is to treat financial systems as complex networks of claims and obligations between various financial institutions present in an eco...

We provide an overview of the relationship between financial networks and systemic risk. We present a taxonomy of different types of systemic risk, differentiating between direct externalities between financial organizations (e.g., defaults, correlated portfolios and firesales), and perceptions and feedback effects (e.g., bank runs, credit freezes). We also discuss optimal regulation and bailouts, measurements of systemic risk and financial centrality, choices by banks' regar...

As impressively shown by the financial crisis in 2007/08, contagion effects in financial networks harbor a great threat for the stability of the entire system. Without sufficient capital requirements for banks and other financial institutions, shocks that are locally confined at first can spread through the entire system and be significantly amplified by various contagion channels. The aim of this thesis is thus to investigate in detail two selected contagion channels of this...

How, and to what extent, does an interconnected financial system endogenously amplify external shocks? This paper attempts to reconcile some apparently different views emerged after the 2008 crisis regarding the nature and the relevance of contagion in financial networks. We develop a common framework encompassing several network contagion models and show that, regardless of the shock distribution and the network topology, precise ordering relationships on the level of aggreg...