Systemic Risk in Banking after the Great Financial Crisis

Author(s):  
Olivier De Bandt ◽  
Philipp Hartmann

In this chapter we present a comprehensive review of systemic risk in banking, as the primary ingredient for understanding financial crises that have severe adverse effects on the macroeconomy (such as the Great Depression or the recent Great Financial Crisis). The first part of the chapter develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes three main forms of systemic risk: contagion, aggregate shocks, and the endogenous build-up and unraveling of widespread financial imbalances (such as credit booms leading to debt overhangs). Ex ante (preventive) policies, notably macroprudential regulation and supervision, and ex post (crisis management and resolution) policies to contain systemic risks and financial crises are also discussed. The second and third parts of the chapter review the existing theoretical and empirical literature about systemic risk, using the previously described conceptual framework and making reference to features of the systemic crisis that started in the summer of 2007.

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (12) ◽  
pp. 3607-3659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Bianchi

We develop a quantitative equilibrium model of financial crises to assess the interaction between ex post interventions in credit markets and the buildup of risk ex ante. During a systemic crisis, bailouts relax balance sheet constraints and mitigate the severity of the recession. Ex ante, the anticipation of such bailouts leads to an increase in risk-taking, making the economy more vulnerable to a financial crisis. We find that moral hazard effects are limited if bailouts are systemic and broad-based. If bailouts are idiosyncratic and targeted, however, this makes the economy significantly more exposed to financial crises. (JEL E23, E32, E44, E63, G01, G21, G28)


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
John Berdell ◽  
Thomas Mondschean

At nearly the same moment, Jeremy Bentham and Henry Thornton adopted diametrically opposed approaches to stabilizing the financial system. Henry Thornton eloquently defended the Bank of England’s actions as the lender of last resort and saw its discretionary management of liquidity as the key stabilizer of the credit system. In contrast, Jeremy Bentham advocated the imposition of strict bank regulations and examinations, without which, he predicted, Britain would soon experience a systemic crisis—which he called “universal bankruptcy.” There are strong parallels but also dramatic differences with our recent attempts to reduce systemic risk within financial systems. The Basel III bank regulatory framework effectively intertwines Bentham’s and Thornton’s diametrically opposed approaches to stabilizing banks. Yet Bentham’s and Thornton’s concerns regarding the stability of the wider financial system remain alive today due to financial innovation and the politics of responding to financial crises.


2009 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Otmar Issing ◽  
Stephany Griffith-Jones ◽  
Stefano Pagliari ◽  
Claudia M. Buch ◽  
Katja Neugebauer

AbstractThe latest financial crisis has been caused by a mixture of state and market failure, argues Otmar Issing. To avoid future crises, more transparency is needed - not by gathering more information, but by gathering it systematically and thereby creating “intelligent transparency”. Furthermore, regulation has to be global, he states. The necessary institutions are in place: The International Monetary Fund, the Financial Stability Board and the Bank for International Settlements.Stephany Griffith-Jones and Stefano Pagliari point out, that containing “systemic risk” is one of the most important rationales for regulating financial markets. Our understanding of the sources of systemic risk has repeatedly been challenged by major episodes of financial instability. The crisis that started in the summer of 2007 has been no exception. They discuss how the latest global financial crisis urges analysts and regulators to rethink the origin of systemic risk beyond a narrow focus on the banking sector, beyond the “too big to fail problem”, and beyond a narrow micro-prudential focus. They focus on two regulatory principles: comprehensiveness and countercyclicality.Claudia Buch und Katja Neugebauer review the existing empirical evidence on whether the increase in cross-border activities has allowed banks to diversify risks and to what extent it has increased banks’ exposure to systemic risks.


2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (37) ◽  
pp. 18341-18346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Engle ◽  
Tianyue Ruan

When financial firms are undercapitalized, they are vulnerable to external shocks. The natural response to such vulnerability is to reduce leverage, and this can endogenously start a financial crisis. Excessive credit growth, the main cause of financial crises, is reflected in the undercapitalization of the financial sector. Market-based measures of systemic risk such as SRISK, which stands for systemic risk, enable monitoring how such weakness emerges and progresses in real time. In this paper, we develop quantitative estimates of the level of systemic risk in the financial sector that precipitates a financial crisis. Common approaches to reduce leverage correspond to specific scaling of systemic risk measures. In an econometric framework that recognizes financial crises represent left tail events for the economy, we estimate the relationship between SRISK and the financial crisis severity for 23 developed countries. We develop a probability of crisis measure and an SRISK capacity measure based on our estimates. Our analysis highlights the important global externality whereby the risk of a crisis in one country is strongly influenced by the undercapitalization of the rest of the world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 895-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Her-Jiun Sheu ◽  
Chien-Ling Cheng

Recent financial crises resulted from systemic risk caused by idiosyncratic distress. In this research, taking Taiwan stock market as an example and collecting data from 2000 to 2010 which contained the 2001 dot-com bubble and the 2007–2009 financial crisis, we adopt the CoVaR model to empirically explore the impact of sector-specific idiosyncratic risk on the systemic risk of the system and attempt to investigate the links between financial crises, systemic risk and the idiosyncratic risk of a sector-specific anomaly. The result showed sector-specific marginal CoVaR, i.e., ΔCoVaR, perfectly explained Taiwan stock market disturbance during the 2001 dot-com bubble and 2007–2008 financial crisis. Thus, by identifying the larger ΔCoVaR sectors, i.e. the systemic importance sectors, and by exploring the risk indicators, independent variables, of these systemic importance sectors, investors could practically employ the sector-specific ΔCoVaR measure to deepen the systemic risk scrutiny from a macro into a micro prudential perspective.


Author(s):  
Clements Akinsoyinu

The Great Financial Crisis has been touted to be the worst crisis since the Great Depression of 1930; its effect has profound ramifications on the global economy. The nature and the severity of the crisis provoked an unprecedented policy response from policy makers at both global and domestic levels. To address the rampaging crisis, the Bank of England implemented a number of conventional and unconventional policy measures to curtail the economic rot and to stimulate economic growth. There is a broad consensus in the empirical literature and other evidence found in this paper that a number of the policies implemented in the United Kingdom played a significant role in re-directing and stimulating the economy. This paper reviews the various policy measures adopted by the Bank of England from the inception of the financial crisis in 2008 and assesses their effectiveness in bringing back the economy from the brink of collapse. Our review shows that quantitative easing (QE) policy and the expansionary fiscal policy adopted by the Bank of England were effective policy tools used in stimulating economic growth, stemming the effect and shortening the duration of the crisis in the United Kingdom


2021 ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Youssef Cassis ◽  
Anna Knaps

Are financial crises actually remembered—and if so, how and by whom? Surprisingly, there has hardly been any attempt to answer this question, whether by economists or historians or indeed other social scientists. And yet they are extremely important questions to address, if we want to understand not only the causes and consequences of financial crises, but more generally how the modern financial system has been shaped. This chapter is a preliminary attempt to answer these questions. This will be done in two steps: first by considering the notion of memory and the extent to which it can be used to in connection with financial crises; and second by providing some evidence, mostly drawn from the press, on the memory of the financial crises of the Great Depression, especially in connection with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.


The financial crisis of 2008 aroused widespread interest in banking and financial history among policy makers, academics, journalists, and even bankers, in addition to the wider public. References in the press to the term ‘Great Depression’ spiked after the failure of Lehman Brothers in November 2008, with similar surges in references to ‘economic history’ at various times during the financial turbulence. In an attempt to better understand the magnitude of the shock, there was a demand for historical parallels. How severe was the financial crash? Was it, in fact, the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression? Were its causes unique or part of a well-known historical pattern? And have financial crises always led to severe depressions? Historical reflection on the recent financial crises and the long-term development of the financial system go hand in hand. This volume provides the material for such a reflection by presenting the state of the art in banking and financial history. Nineteen highly regarded experts present twenty-one chapters on the economic and financial side of banking and financial activities, primarily—though not solely—in advanced economies, in a long-term comparative perspective. In addition to paying attention to general issues, not least those related to theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline, the volume approaches the banking and financial world from four distinct but interrelated angles: financial institutions, financial markets, financial regulation, and financial crises.


2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Sebastian Zemla

AbstractCrises cause attentiveness in our society and awaken, depending on the degree of consternation, our ongoing interest. These events include financial crises, phenomenal incidents that shock the economic world and pose significant challenges for the governments. Two crises which stand out in this context are the Great Depression in 1929 and the financial crisis in 2007/2008. In addition to the comparative approach, the paper focuses directly on the typical repetitive mechanism (“recurrent pattern of banking and sovereign debt crises” (Reinhart & Rogoff, 2011): overheating, the forming of a bubble and the bursting of the bubble, largely started in the USA. Specific aspects included in this research area are crisis management in the decades mentioned above, the role of governments and banks, as well as the observation as to which crisis can be expected next. We can conclude that the current monetary systems led by complex financial instruments and addicted to low interest rates are prone to deliver another serious financial crisis.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 711
Author(s):  
Xiao Bai ◽  
Huaping Sun ◽  
Shibao Lu ◽  
Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a heavy impact on the world economy, which arouses growing concerns about potential systemic risk, taking place in countries and regions. At this critical moment, it makes sense to interpret the systemic risk from the perspective of the financial crisis framework. By combing the latest research on systemic risks, we may arrive at some precautions relating to the current events. This literature review verifies the origin of systemic risk research. By comparing the retrieved and screened systemic literature with the relevant research on the financial crisis, more focus on the micro-foundations of systemic risk has been discovered. Besides, the measurement methods of systemic risks and the introduction of interdisciplinary methods have made the research in this field particularly active. This paper synthesizes the previous research conclusions to find the appropriate definition of systemic risk and combs the research literature of systemic risk from two lines: Firstly, conducting the division according to the sub-branch fields within the financial discipline and the relevant interdisciplinary research methods, which is helpful for scholars within and outside the discipline to have a more systematic understanding of the research in this field. Secondly predicting the research direction that can be expanded in this field.


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