Non-traditional systemic risk contagion within the Chinese banking industry

Systemic risk contagion is a key issue in the banking sector in maintaining financial system stability. This study is among the first few to use three different distance-to-risk measures to empirically assess the domestic interbank linkages and systemic contagion risk of the Chinese banking industry, by using bivariate dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model on data collected from eight prominent Chinese banks for the period 2006–2018. The results show a relatively high correlation among almost all the banks, suggesting an interconnectedness among the banks. We found evidence that the banking system is exposed to significant domestic contagion risks arising from systemic defaults. Given that Chinese markets deliver weak signals of forthcoming stress in banking sectors, new policy intervention is crucial to resolve the hidden stress in the system. The results have important policy implications and will provide scholars and policymakers further insight into the risk contagion originating from interbank networks

Transmission Channels of Systemic Risk and Contagion in the European Financial Network

We investigate systemic risk and how financial contagion propagates within the euro area banking system by employing the Maximum Entropy method. The study captures multiple snapshots of a dynamic financial network and uses counterfactual simulations to propagate shocks emerging from three sources of systemic risk: interbank, asset price, and sovereign credit risk markets. As conditions deteriorate, these channels trigger severe direct and indirect losses and cascades of defaults, whilst the dominance of the sovereign credit risk channel amplifies, as the primary source of financial contagion in the banking network. Systemic risk within the northern euro area banking system is less apparent, while the southern euro area banking system is more prone and susceptible to bank failures provoked by financial contagion. By modelling the contagion path the results demonstrate that the euro area banking system insists to be markedly vulnerable and conducive to systemic risks

Financial Networks and Systemic Risk in China’s Banking System

In this paper, using two alternative methods, we investigate the contagion effects and systemic risk in China’s commercial banks system based on the balance sheet data and the estimation on interbank exposures. First, we calculate various indicators in terms of the balance sheets of individual commercial banks to quantify contagiousness and vulnerability for China’s banking system without considering the detailed topology of interbank networks. Second, we estimate the detailed bilateral exposures matrix of the interbank network to examine the domino effects and snowball effects of financial contagion. The simulation results from two alternative approaches are consistent. Both suggest that the contagious risk arising from an assumed bank failure is trivial in Chinese banking system, whereas the amplification effects of the losses due to the financial interlinkage are non-trivial. In particular, we identify the systemic important banks in terms of a relative contagion index and the measures capturing the topological features of the interbank networks, respectively. Our study provides insights for the prevention of systemic risk and the implementation of macroprudential oversights in China’s banking system

Epidemics of Liquidity Shortages in Interbank Markets

Financial contagion from liquidity shocks has being recently ascribed as a prominent driver of systemic risk in interbank lending markets. Building on standard compartment models used in epidemics, in this work we develop an EDB (Exposed-Distressed-Bankrupted) model for the dynamics of liquidity shocks reverberation between banks, and validate it on electronic market for interbank deposits data. We show that the interbank network was highly susceptible to liquidity contagion at the beginning of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, and that the subsequent micro-prudential and liquidity hoarding policies adopted by banks increased the network resilience to systemic risk---yet with the undesired side effect of drying out liquidity from the market. We finally show that the individual riskiness of a bank is better captured by its network centrality than by its participation to the market, along with the currently debated concept of "too interconnected to fail"

Interbank Linkages and Contagion Risk in the Portuguese Banking System

Mestrado em Economia Monetária e FinanceiraInterbank money markets play a fundamental role in financial systems, since they allow for the redistribution of liquidity between financial institutions. However, they can also be a channel through which problems in one institution can spread to the remaining ones. In particular, the potential for contagion stemming from interbank money markets is closely related with the pattern of interbank lending relationships. In this study, we characterize the Portuguese overnight interbank money market between 1999 and 2009 and analyze its inherent potential for contagion, based on bilateral interbank exposures obtained from the application of Furfine's procedure to settlement data from the Portuguese TARGET component. We conclude that: (i) the Portuguese overnight interbank money market is ruled out by a multiple money center structure, where some banks have, simultaneously, an important role as lenders as well as borrowers; (ii) although unlikely, the failure of one institution can have contagion effects, pushing-others into failure. However, even under the most extreme assumptions, institutions that fail by contagion represent less than 10 per cent of the total banking system assets. On the other hand, even if there are no defaults due to contagion, a foreign bank failure can have non-negligible knock-on effects under national banks. Yet, overnight interbank lending relationships do not generally represent a major threat to the stability of the Portuguese financial system.O mercado monetário interbancário desempenha um papel fundamental no sistema financeiro, permitindo a redistribuição de liquidez entre as instituições financeiras. Porém, pode representar igualmente um canal para a propagação de problemas entre instituições. Em particular, o potencial de contágio existente no mercado interbancário está intimamente relacionado com a estrutura das relações estabelecidas através dos empréstimos interbancários. O presente estudo caracteriza o mercado monetário interbancário overnight português, entre 1999 e 2009, e analisa o potencial de contágio inerente ao mesmo, com base nas exposições interbancárias bilaterais obtidas através da aplicação do procedimento de Furfine aos dados sobre as transacções liquidadas na componente portuguesa do TARGET. É possível concluir que: (i) o mercado monetário interbancário overnight português assenta numa estrutura do tipo "multiple money center", sendo que alguns bancos desempenham um papel fundamental quer como financiadores, quer como mutuários; (ii) apesar de improvável, a falência de uma das instituições participantes no mercado pode ter efeitos de contágio, conduzindo à falência de outras instituições. No entanto, mesmo com pressupostos extremos, as instituições que poderiam falir por contágio representam menos de 10 por cento do activo total do sistema bancário. Por outro lado, mesmo não ocorrendo falências por contágio, a falência de um banco estrangeiro pode ter efeitos não negligenciáveis sobre os bancos nacionais. Não obstante, de uma forma geral, os empréstimos interbancários overnight não representam uma ameaça significativa à estabilidade do sistema financeiro português