Default cascades: When does risk diversification increase stability?
Abstract
We explore the dynamics of default cascades in a network of credit interlink-ages in which each agent is at the same time a borrower and a lender. When some counterparties of an agent default, the loss she experiences amounts to her total exposure to those counterparties. A possible conjecture in this context is that individual risk diversification across more numerous counterparties should make also systemic defaults less likely. We show that this view is not always true. In particular, the diversification of credit risk across many borrowers has ambiguous effects on systemic risk in the presence of mechanisms of loss amplifications such as in the presence of potential runs among the short-term lenders of the agents in the network.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Financial Stability.
Volume (Year): 8 (2012)
Issue (Month): 3 ()
Pages: 138-149
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jfstabil
Related research
Keywords: Systemic risk; Network models; Contagion; Financial crisis;Other versions of this item:
- Stefano Battiston & Domenico Delli Gatti & Mauro Gallegati & Bruce Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, . "Default Cascades: When Does Risk Diversification Increase Stability?," Working Papers ETH-RC-11-006, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
- D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
- G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
- G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Josselin Garnier & George Papanicolaou & Tzu-Wei Yang, 2012. "Large deviations for a mean field model of systemic risk," Papers 1204.3536, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2012.
- Rahul Kaushik & Stefano Battiston, 2012. "Credit Default Swaps Drawup Networks: Too Tied To Be Stable?," Papers 1205.0976, arXiv.org.
- Rahul Kaushik & Stefano Battiston, . "Credit Default Swaps Drawup Networks: Too Tied To Be Stable?," Working Papers ETH-RC-12-013, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
- Paolo Tasca & Stefano Battiston, . "Market Procyclicality and Systemic Risk," Working Papers ETH-RC-12-012, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
- Matteo Chinazzi & Giorgio Fagiolo & Javier A. Reyes & Stefano Schiavo, 2012.
"Post-Mortem Examination of the International Financial Network,"
LEM Papers Series
2012/04, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
- Matteo Chinazzi & Giorgio Fagiolo & Javier A. Reyes & Stefano Schiavo, 2012. "Post-Mortem Examination of the International Financial Network," Department of Economics Working Papers 1202, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
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