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We find information through our social network. A network of banks handles our financial transactions. And when computers freeze under virus attacks, we are reminded of how pervasive networks are. This work concentrates on two topics. The first part of the thesis studies how highly unequal networks, where links are concentrated on a few key nodes, can emerge. The interest is motivated by how their structure affects their function: the spread of information and disease, for instance, may occur faster in such networks The second part of the thesis applies network theories to gain a better understanding of financial systems. We investigate the strategic motivations of banks to interact with each other when the banking system is exposed to the danger of contagion.
This essay consists of three chapters. Chapter one extends Allen and Gale's (2000) model to a core-periphery network structure. We identify that the financial contagion in core-periphery structure is different to Allen and Gale (2000) in two aspects. Firstly, the shocks to the periphery bank and to the core bank have different contagion processes. Secondly, contagion not only depends on the amount of claims a bank has on a failed bank, but also on the number of links the failed neighbour has. Chapter two studies the policy effect on financial network formation when the government has time-inconsistency problem on bailing out systemically important bank. We show that if interbank deposits are guaranteed, the equilibrium network structure is different from the one under market discipline. We show that under market discipline individual banks can collectively increase the component size using interbank intermediation in order to increases the severity of systemic risk and hence trigger the bailout. If interbank intermediation is costly the equilibrium network has core-periphery structure. Chapter three follows Acharya and Yorulmazer's (2007) study of the "too many to fail" problem in a two-bank model. They argue that in order to reduce the social losses, the financial regulator finds it ex post optimal to bail out every troubled bank if they fail together, because the acquisition of liquidated assets by other investors result in a high misallocation cost. In contrast to their paper, we argue that there is no "too many to fail" bailout, unless banking capital is costly and market price sensitive. We argue that market price sensitive capital can induce banks herding and high social cost.
This paper studies the interconnectedness of the global financial system and its susceptibility to shocks. A novel multilayer network framework is applied to link debt and equity exposures across countries. Use of this approach—that examines simultaneously multiple channels of transmission and their important higher order effects—shows that ignoring the heterogeneity of financial exposures, and simply aggregating all claims, as often done in other studies, can underestimate the extent and effects of financial contagion.The structure of the global financial network has changed since the global financial crisis, impacted by European bank’s deleveraging and higher corporate debt issuance. Still, we find that the structure of the system and contagion remain similar in that network is highly susceptible to shocks from central countries and those with large financial systems (e.g., the USA and the UK). While, individual European countries (excluding the UK) have relatively low impact on shock propagation, the network is highly susceptible to the shocks from the entire euro area. Another important development is the rising role of the Asian countries and the noticeable increase in network susceptibility to shocks from China and Hong Kong SAR economies.
Financial inter-dependencies are since the financial crisis at the forefront of macroeconomic research and policy making. The world had painfully learned how small and localized events can travel through the global financial system with huge repercussions for the real economy. Since then, many studies have analyzed the propagation properties of given financial exposure networks. Each day, however, large amounts of financial assets are traded and financial institutions' balance-sheets change in response to new information, regulation or monetary policy. Changes in exposures crucially affect the transmission of shocks. This thesis develops general equilibrium frameworks that show how financial networks emerge endogenously from trade in financial assets between heterogeneous institutions. I use micro and macro-level datasets including confidential data from the Banque de France to structurally identify risk-preferences, institutions' beliefs about the distribution of future financial asset returns, and the specific constraints that drive financial network formation. The thesis also derives an explicit firm-level link of financial networks to an economy's productive structure.Chapter 1 of the thesis shows how firm-level productivity shocks propagate through financial networks. If firms need external funds to finance capital expenditure, banks create linkages between them that go beyond their input-output relationships. These links can affect aggregate output. The chapter builds a multi-sector production model of heterogeneous firms that are financed by heterogeneous leverage targeting banks. Banks are themselves connected through bilateral cross-holdings. Endogenous financial asset prices introduce a new propagation channel of productivity shocks. Structural parameters such as bank-level leverage constraints determine the strength of this channel and one statistic is sufficient to capture it. I use confidential matched bank-firm-level data from the Banque de France on corporate bond investments to estimate the model. The model can be used to study macro-prudential regulation and monetary policy.Chapter 2 uses bank- and instrument-level data on asset holdings and liabilities to identify and estimate a general equilibrium model of trade in financial instruments shaping an endogenous network of interlinked banks' balance-sheets. Bilateral ties are formed as each bank selects the size and the diversification of its assets and liabilities. Shocks propagate due to the response, rather than the size, of bilateral ties to such shocks. The network exhibit key theoretical properties: (i) more connected networks lead to less amplification of partial equilibrium shocks, (ii) the influence of a bank's equity is independent of the size of its holdings; (iii) more risk-averse banks are more diversified, lowering their own volatility but increasing their influence on other banks. The structural estimation of the network model for the universe of French banks shows that the endogenous change in the network matters two to three times more than the initial network of cross-holdings for the transmission of shocks. The estimated network is used to assess the effects of the ECB's quantitative easing policy.Chapter 3 concludes the thesis with a more aggregated sector-level analysis. It first studies how the sharp deterioration of the net external portfolio position of France between 2008 and 2014 was driven by sectoral patterns such as the banking sector retrenchment and the increase in foreign liabilities of the public and corporate sectors but was mitigated by the expansion of domestic and foreign asset portfolios of insurance companies. It provides a network representation of the links between domestic sectors and the rest of the world. Sectoral shock propagation through inter-sectoral security holdings is studied in an estimated balance-sheet contagion model.
This volume presents a unified mathematical framework for the transmission channels for damaging shocks that can lead to instability in financial systems. As the title suggests, financial contagion is analogous to the spread of disease, and damaging financial crises may be better understood by bringing to bear ideas from studying other complex systems in our world. After considering how people have viewed financial crises and systemic risk in the past, it delves into the mechanics of the interactions between banking counterparties. It finds a common mathematical structure for types of crises that proceed through cascade mappings that approach a cascade equilibrium. Later chapters follow this theme, starting from the underlying random skeleton graph, developing into the theory of bootstrap percolation, ultimately leading to techniques that can determine the large scale nature of contagious financial cascades.
Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system the integration of national financial markets grew steadily, to reach unprecedented levels. At the same time, episodes of extreme financial instability became more frequent. The latter were often extremely contagious, in the sense that country-specific episodes had hugely disruptive effects on financial markets across the globe. The literature on Financial Contagion investigates the channels through which that instability is propagated. This thesis deals with the two most recurring questions in the literature: 1) What are the channels of macroeconomic instability propagation? A theoretical model of instability propagation in presence of currency mismatches is presented. The model shows that when domestic agents' liabilities are denominated in foreign currency, exchange rate volatility raises credit costs, with negative real effects. Currency mismatches therefore create a channel through which external disturbances causing exchange rate volatility affect negatively the domestic supply. Several reasons why currency mismatches might magnify the effect of foreign disturbances have been identified by the theoretical literature on the issue. The empirical relevance of the magnification hypothesis is tested by investigating whether the degree of domestic output's sensitivity to foreign output fluctuations is higher in countries where currency mismatches are widespread than in countries able to borrow abroad in domestic currency. The analysis gives strong support to the hypothesis: currency mismatches magnify the real effects of foreign disturbances. The analysis also highlights the presence of asymmetry of propagation: negative shocks have proportionally stronger real effects than positive ones in currency-mismatches-prone countries. 2) Is the financial shocks propagation mechanism altered by major events such as banking or currency crises? The intensity of propagation of the crises in the '90s led researchers to ask whether the linkages between countries grew stronger during these turbulent times or were instead as strong before. Various tests of the instability of the propagation mechanism have been proposed since. These can be divided in two families: correlation-based and extreme-event-based tests. I propose a new approach, based on the Quantile Regression technique. It is argued that this approach retains the appealing features of the two families of test while avoiding some of their limitations. The new approach is then applied to stock market returns, finding strong evidence of instability of the propagation mechanism.