IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/642.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Likely is Contagion in Financial Networks?

Author

Listed:
  • H Peyton Young
  • Paul Glasserman

Abstract

Interconnections among financial institutions create potential channels for contagion and amplification of shocks to the financial system. We propose precise definitions of these concepts and analyze their magnitude. Contagion occurs when a shock to the assets of a single firm causes other firms to default through the network of obligations; amplification occurs when losses among defaulting nodes keep escalating due to their indebtedness to one another. Contagion is weak if the probability of default through contagion is no greater than the probability of default through independent direct shocks to the defaulting nodes. We derive a general formula which shows that, for a wide variety of shock distributions, contagion is weak unless the triggering node is large and/or highly leveraged compared to the nodes it topples through contagion. We also estimate how much the interconnections between nodes increase total losses beyond the level that would be incurred without interconnections. A distinguishing feature of our approach is that the results do not depend on the specific topology: they hold for any financial network with a given distribution of bank sizes and leverage levels. We apply the framework to European Banking Authority data and show that both the probability of contagion and the expected increase in losses are small under a wide variety of shock distributions. Our conclusion is that the direct transmission of shocks through payment obligations does not have a major effect on defaults and losses; other mechanisms such as loss of confidence and declines in credit quality are more llikely sources of contagion.

Suggested Citation

  • H Peyton Young & Paul Glasserman, 2013. "How Likely is Contagion in Financial Networks?," Economics Series Working Papers 642, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:642
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8f3a25d4-fc75-416a-9712-42f1e9ef7ec4
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gai, Prasanna & Kapadia, Sujit, 2010. "Contagion in financial networks," Bank of England working papers 383, Bank of England.
    2. Upper, Christian & Worms, Andreas, 2004. "Estimating bilateral exposures in the German interbank market: Is there a danger of contagion?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 827-849, August.
    3. Hans Degryse & Grégory Nguyen, 2004. "Interbank exposures: an empirical examination of systemic risk in the Belgian banking system," Working Paper Research 43, National Bank of Belgium.
    4. Upper, Christian, 2011. "Simulation methods to assess the danger of contagion in interbank markets," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 111-125, August.
    5. Helmut Elsinger & Alfred Lehar & Martin Summer, 2006. "Risk Assessment for Banking Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(9), pages 1301-1314, September.
    6. Charles Goodhart & Pojanart Sunirand & Dimitrios Tsomocos, 2006. "A model to analyse financial fragility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 27(1), pages 107-142, January.
    7. Allen, Franklin & Carletti, Elena, 2013. "New theories to underpin financial reform," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 242-249.
    8. Goodhart, Charles A. E. & Sunirand, Pojanart & Tsomocos, Dimitrios P., 2004. "A model to analyse financial fragility: applications," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 1-30, September.
    9. Rodrigo Cifuentes & Hyun Song Shin & Gianluigi Ferrucci, 2005. "Liquidity Risk and Contagion," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 556-566, 04/05.
    10. Georg, Co-Pierre, 2011. "The effect of the interbank network structure on contagion and common shocks," Discussion Paper Series 2: Banking and Financial Studies 2011,12, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    11. Andrew G. Haldane & Robert M. May, 2011. "Systemic risk in banking ecosystems," Nature, Nature, vol. 469(7330), pages 351-355, January.
    12. Nier, Erlend & Yang, Jing & Yorulmazer, Tanju & Alentorn, Amadeo, 2007. "Network models and financial stability," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 2033-2060, June.
    13. Battiston, Stefano & Gatti, Domenico Delli & Gallegati, Mauro & Greenwald, Bruce & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2012. "Default cascades: When does risk diversification increase stability?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 138-149.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Georgescu, Oana-Maria, 2015. "Contagion in the interbank market: Funding versus regulatory constraints," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 1-18.
    2. Antonio Cabrales & Piero Gottardi & Fernando Vega-Redondo, 2017. "Risk Sharing and Contagion in Networks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(9), pages 3086-3127.
    3. Doina PRODAN-PALADE, 2017. "Bankruptcy risk prediction models based on artificial neural networks," The Audit Financiar journal, Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania, vol. 15(147), pages 418-418.
    4. Hamed Amini & Andreea Minca, 2014. "Inhomogeneous Financial Networks and Contagious Links," Working Papers hal-01081559, HAL.
    5. Sylvain Benoît & Gilbert Colletaz & Christophe Hurlin & Christophe Pérignon, 2013. "A Theoretical and Empirical Comparison of Systemic Risk Measures," Working Papers halshs-00746272, HAL.
    6. Andrea Aguiar & Rick Bookstaber & Thomas Wipf, 2014. "A Map of Funding Durability and Risk," Working Papers 14-03, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    7. Matthew Elliott & Benjamin Golub & Matthew O. Jackson, 2014. "Financial Networks and Contagion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3115-3153, October.
    8. Hong Fan & Chirongo Moses Keregero & Qianqian Gao, 2018. "The Application of Macroprudential Capital Requirements in Managing Systemic Risk," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2018, pages 1-15, January.
    9. Rama Cont & Andreea Minca, 2016. "Credit default swaps and systemic risk," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 247(2), pages 523-547, December.
    10. Mark R. Powell, 2015. "Risk‐Based Sampling: I Don't Want to Weight in Vain," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(12), pages 2172-2182, December.
    11. Covi, Giovanni & Brookes, James & Raja, Charumathi, 2022. "Measuring Capital at Risk in the UK banking sector: a microstructural network approach," Bank of England working papers 983, Bank of England.
    12. Office of Financial Research (ed.), 2013. "Office of Financial Research 2013 Annual Report," Reports, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury, number 13-2, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akay, Ozgur (Ozzy) & Senyuz, Zeynep & Yoldas, Emre, 2013. "Hedge fund contagion and risk-adjusted returns: A Markov-switching dynamic factor approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 16-29.
    2. Glasserman, Paul & Young, H. Peyton, 2015. "How likely is contagion in financial networks?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 383-399.
    3. Andre R. Neveu, 2018. "A survey of network-based analysis and systemic risk measurement," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 13(2), pages 241-281, July.
    4. Paul Glasserman & Peyton Young, 2015. "Contagion in Financial Networks," Economics Series Working Papers 764, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Marco Bardoscia & Paolo Barucca & Stefano Battiston & Fabio Caccioli & Giulio Cimini & Diego Garlaschelli & Fabio Saracco & Tiziano Squartini & Guido Caldarelli, 2021. "The Physics of Financial Networks," Papers 2103.05623, arXiv.org.
    6. Hüser, Anne-Caroline, 2016. "Too interconnected to fail: A survey of the Interbank Networks literature," SAFE Working Paper Series 91, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2016.
    7. Fabio Caccioli & Paolo Barucca & Teruyoshi Kobayashi, 2018. "Network models of financial systemic risk: a review," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 81-114, January.
    8. Caccioli, Fabio & Farmer, J. Doyne & Foti, Nick & Rockmore, Daniel, 2015. "Overlapping portfolios, contagion, and financial stability," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 50-63.
    9. Pawe{l} Smaga & Mateusz Wili'nski & Piotr Ochnicki & Piotr Arendarski & Tomasz Gubiec, 2016. "Can banks default overnight? Modeling endogenous contagion on O/N interbank market," Papers 1603.05142, arXiv.org.
    10. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2013:i:129 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Paul Glasserman & H. Peyton Young, 2015. "Contagion in Financial Markets," Working Papers 15-21, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    12. Gabrielle Demange, 2018. "Contagion in Financial Networks: A Threat Index," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(2), pages 955-970, February.
    13. Sam Langfield & Kimmo Soramäki, 2016. "Interbank Exposure Networks," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 47(1), pages 3-17, January.
    14. Siklos, Pierre L. & Stefan, Martin, 2021. "Exchange rate shocks in multicurrency interbank markets," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    15. Covi, Giovanni & Gorpe, Mehmet Ziya & Kok, Christoffer, 2021. "CoMap: Mapping Contagion in the Euro Area Banking Sector," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    16. Marco Bardoscia & Stefano Battiston & Fabio Caccioli & Guido Caldarelli, 2015. "DebtRank: A Microscopic Foundation for Shock Propagation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-13, June.
    17. Christoph Siebenbrunner, 2021. "Quantifying the importance of different contagion channels as sources of systemic risk," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 16(1), pages 103-131, January.
    18. Bardoscia, Marco & Barucca, Paolo & Codd, Adam Brinley & Hill, John, 2019. "Forward-looking solvency contagion," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    19. Tomáš Klinger & Petr Teplý, 2014. "Systemic Risk of the Global Banking System - An Agent-Based Network Model Approach," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2014(1), pages 24-41.
    20. Lee, Seung Hwan, 2013. "Systemic liquidity shortages and interbank network structures," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12.
    21. Teteryatnikova, Mariya, 2014. "Systemic risk in banking networks: Advantages of “tiered” banking systems," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 186-210.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Systemic risk; contagion; financial network;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:642. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.