International trade, foreign direct investments, and firms’ systemic risk : Evidence from the Netherlands

This paper measures the contribution of firms in the financial and non-financial sectors to systemic risk. We quantify systemic risk as possible risk spillovers from individual firms to the economy by taking into account time-varying linkages between the firm and the economy. Based on a novel dataset that combines data on international trade and foreign direct investments with daily stock data for 67 Dutch listed companies from 2006–2015, our results indicate that high systemic risk contributions are not only present in the financial sector, but also occur in other sectors of the economy. We find that firms within the financial sector are more capable than non-financial firms of reverting to their pre-financial crisis level of systemic risk contribution. Having examined the potential role globalization fulfills in determining systemic risk, we find two main opposing effects. First, firms in internationally trade-intensive sectors contribute less to systemic risk than firms in sectors with low trade intensity. Second, systemic risk rises when firms are engaged in foreign direct investment activity, suggesting that international networks and global supply chains contribute to systemic risk propagation. Our empirical results imply that macro-prudential policy aimed at monitoring systemic risk should be extended to non-financial sectors and should take into consideration globalization measures, such as foreign direct investments and global supply chains.