IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v99y2011i2p333-348.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Diversification disasters

Author

Listed:
  • Ibragimov, Rustam
  • Jaffee, Dwight
  • Walden, Johan

Abstract

The recent financial crisis has revealed significant externalities and systemic risks that arise from the interconnectedness of financial intermediaries' risk portfolios. We develop a model in which the negative externality arises because intermediaries' actions to diversify that are optimal for individual intermediaries may prove to be suboptimal for society. We show that the externality depends critically on the distributional properties of the risks. The optimal social outcome involves less risk-sharing, but also a lower probability for massive collapses of intermediaries. We derive the exact conditions under which risk-sharing restrictions create a socially preferable outcome. Our analysis has implications for regulation of financial institutions and risk management.

Suggested Citation

  • Ibragimov, Rustam & Jaffee, Dwight & Walden, Johan, 2011. "Diversification disasters," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 333-348, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:99:y:2011:i:2:p:333-348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-405X(10)00191-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acharya, Viral V., 2009. "A theory of systemic risk and design of prudential bank regulation," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 224-255, September.
    2. Wagner, Wolf, 2010. "Diversification at financial institutions and systemic crises," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 373-386, July.
    3. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2008. "Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2195-2230, October.
    4. Rustam Ibragimov & Dwight Jaffee & Johan Walden, 2010. "Pricing and Capital Allocation for Multiline Insurance Firms," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 77(3), pages 551-578, September.
    5. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    6. Loretan, Mico & Phillips, Peter C. B., 1994. "Testing the covariance stationarity of heavy-tailed time series: An overview of the theory with applications to several financial datasets," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 211-248, January.
    7. Rustam Ibragimov, 2009. "Portfolio diversification and value at risk under thick-tailedness," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(5), pages 565-580.
    8. Dwight Jaffee, 2006. "Monoline Restrictions, with Applications to Mortgage Insurance and Title Insurance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 28(2), pages 83-108, March.
    9. Donald W. K. Andrews, 2005. "Cross-Section Regression with Common Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1551-1585, September.
    10. Richard B. Olsen & Ulrich A. Müller & Michel M. Dacorogna & Olivier V. Pictet & Rakhal R. Davé & Dominique M. Guillaume, 1997. "From the bird's eye to the microscope: A survey of new stylized facts of the intra-daily foreign exchange markets (*)," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 95-129.
    11. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    12. Rustam Ibragimov & Johan Walden, 2006. "The Limits of Diversification When Losses May Be Large," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2104, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    13. Jansen, Dennis W & de Vries, Casper G, 1991. "On the Frequency of Large Stock Returns: Putting Booms and Busts into Perspective," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(1), pages 18-24, February.
    14. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    15. Jaffee Dwight M., 2009. "Monoline Regulations to Control the Systemic Risk Created by Investment Banks and GSEs," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 1-22, March.
    16. Gordy, Michael B., 2003. "A risk-factor model foundation for ratings-based bank capital rules," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 199-232, July.
    17. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-276, June.
    18. Rochet, Jean-Charles & Tirole, Jean, 1996. "Interbank Lending and Systemic Risk," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(4), pages 733-762, November.
    19. Rustam Ibragimov, 2005. "Portfolio Diversification and Value at Risk Under Thick-Tailedness," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2086, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    20. Lux, Thomas, 1998. "The socio-economic dynamics of speculative markets: interacting agents, chaos, and the fat tails of return distributions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 143-165, January.
    21. Ibragimov, Rustam & Walden, Johan, 2007. "The limits of diversification when losses may be large," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 2551-2569, August.
    22. Xavier Gabaix & Parameswaran Gopikrishnan & Vasiliki Plerou & H. Eugene Stanley, 2006. "Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 461-504.
    23. Michael B. Gordy, 2000. "Credit VAR and risk-bucket capital rules: a reconciliation," Proceedings 685, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    24. Rustam Ibragimov & Dwight Jaffee & Johan Walden, 2009. "Nondiversification Traps in Catastrophe Insurance Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 959-993, March.
    25. Froot, Kenneth A. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1998. "Risk management, capital budgeting, and capital structure policy for financial institutions: an integrated approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 55-82, January.
    26. Eugene F. Fama, 1965. "Portfolio Analysis in a Stable Paretian Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(3), pages 404-419, January.
    27. Samuelson, Paul A., 1967. "General Proof that Diversification Pays*," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-13, March.
    28. Froot, Kenneth A & Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1993. "Risk Management: Coordinating Corporate Investment and Financing Policies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1629-1658, December.
    29. Anil K. Kashyap & Raghuram G. Rajan & Jeremy C. Stein, 2008. "Rethinking capital regulation," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 431-471.
    30. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    31. Ibragimov, Rustam & Walden, Johan, 2007. "The limits of diversification when losses may be large," Scholarly Articles 2624460, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    32. Albert S. Kyle & Wei Xiong, 2001. "Contagion as a Wealth Effect," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1401-1440, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rustam Ibragimov & Johan Walden, 2011. "Value at risk and efficiency under dependence and heavy-tailedness: models with common shocks," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 285-318, August.
    2. Ibragimov, Rustam, 2014. "On the robustness of location estimators in models of firm growth under heavy-tailedness," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 181(1), pages 25-33.
    3. Chollete, Lorán & de la Peña, Victor & Lu, Ching-Chih, 2012. "International diversification: An extreme value approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 871-885.
    4. Ankudinov, Andrei & Ibragimov, Rustam & Lebedev, Oleg, 2017. "Sanctions and the Russian stock market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 150-162.
    5. Ibragimov, Rustam & Prokhorov, Artem, 2016. "Heavy tails and copulas: Limits of diversification revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 102-107.
    6. Markus Huggenberger & Peter Albrecht, 2022. "Risk pooling and solvency regulation: A policyholder's perspective," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(4), pages 907-950, December.
    7. Ibragimov, Rustam & Walden, Johan, 2007. "The limits of diversification when losses may be large," Scholarly Articles 2624460, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    8. Viral V. Acharya & Lasse H. Pedersen & Thomas Philippon & Matthew Richardson, 2017. "Measuring Systemic Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(1), pages 2-47.
    9. Rustam Ibragimov & Johan Walden, 2010. "Optimal Bundling Strategies Under Heavy-Tailed Valuations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(11), pages 1963-1976, November.
    10. Tong, Bin & Wu, Chongfeng & Xu, Weidong, 2012. "Risk concentration of aggregated dependent risks: The second-order properties," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 139-149.
    11. Ankudinov, Andrei & Ibragimov, Rustam & Lebedev, Oleg, 2017. "Heavy tails and asymmetry of returns in the Russian stock market," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 200-219.
    12. Chollete, Lorán & de la Peña, Victor & Lu, Ching-Chih, 2011. "International diversification: A copula approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 403-417, February.
    13. Ibragimov, Rustam & Walden, Johan, 2008. "Portfolio diversification under local and moderate deviations from power laws," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 594-599, April.
    14. Moore, Kyle & Zhou, Chen, 2014. "The determinants of systemic importance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59289, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Steven Kou & Xianhua Peng, 2016. "On the Measurement of Economic Tail Risk," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 1056-1072, October.
    16. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    17. Chollete, Lorán, 2008. "The Propagation of Financial Extremes: An Application to Subprime Market Spillovers," Discussion Papers 2008/2, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    18. Daniel Bauer & George Zanjani, 2016. "The Marginal Cost of Risk, Risk Measures, and Capital Allocation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1431-1457, May.
    19. Steven Kou & Xianhua Peng & Chris C. Heyde, 2013. "External Risk Measures and Basel Accords," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 38(3), pages 393-417, August.
    20. Chollete, Loran & de la Pena , Victor & Lu, Ching-Chih, 2009. "International Diversification: An Extreme Value Approach," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2009/26, University of Stavanger.

    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:eee:jfinec:v:99:y:2011:i:2:p:333-348. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    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.