Financial contagion

About: Financial contagion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1491 publications have been published within this topic receiving 48037 citations.

No Contagion, Only Interdependence: Measuring Stock Market Comovements

Abstract: Heteroskedasticity biases tests for contagion based on correlation coefficients. When contagion is defined as a significant increase in market comovement after a shock to one country, previous work suggests contagion occurred during recent crises. This paper shows that correlation coefficients are conditional on market volatility. Under certain assumptions, it is possible to adjust for this bias. Using this adjustment, there was virtually no increase in unconditional correlation coefficients (i.e., no contagion) during the 1997 Asian crisis, 1994 Mexican devaluation, and 1987 U.S. market crash. There is a high level of market comovement in all periods, however, which we call interdependence.

What is Financial Contagion

Abstract: The phrase financial contagion draws on a concept whose root meaning lies in the field of epidemiology. Like almost all metaphors, this one has the power to illuminate and to mislead. Its referent is the spread of financial distress from one firm, market, asset class, nation, or geographical region to others. But, contagion carries with it other burdens of meaning. First, to refer to contagion, instead of merely to an epidemic, is to implicitly assert that there is a mechanism of transmission from one infected victim to other potential victims. For example, bubonic plague and malaria may give rise to epidemics, but these diseases are not contagious, being transmitted by the bite of a flea and the sting of a mosquito, rather than being spread fromone infected party to another. By contrast, some epidemics may be the result of truly contagious diseases in which the disease spreads directly from one victim to another through the direct transmittal of a pathogen, such as is the case with tuberculosis and AIDS. Second, because a contagious disease spreads from one infected host to others by some mechanism, the key to understanding such a malady is to comprehend the method of transmission. Finally, by invoking a metaphor of illness, financial contagion implies an economic disorder, dislocation, or disease.

Transmission of Volatility between Stock Markets

Abstract: This paper investigates why, in October 1987, almost all stock markets fell together despite widely differing economic circumstances. The idea is that "contagion" between markets occurs as the result of attempts by rational agents to infer information from price changes in other markets. This provides a channel through which a "mistake" in one market can be transmitted to other markets. Hourly stock price data from New York, Tokyo and London during an eight month period around the crash offer support for the contagion model. In addition, the magnitude of the contagion coefficients are found to increase with volatility.

Systemic Risk and Stability in Financial Networks

Abstract: We provide a framework for studying the relationship between the financial network architecture and the likelihood of systemic failures due to contagion of counterparty risk. We show that financial contagion exhibits a form of phase transition as interbank connections increase: as long as the magnitude and the number of negative shocks affecting financial institutions are sufficiently small, more "complete" interbank claims enhance the stability of the system. However, beyond a certain point, such interconnections start to serve as a mechanism for propagation of shocks and lead to a more fragile financial system. We also show that, under natural contracting assumptions, financial networks that emerge in equilibrium may be socially inefficient due to the presence of a network externality: even though banks take the effects of their lending, risk-taking and failure on their immediate creditors into account, they do not internalize the consequences of their actions on the rest of the network.