Systemic risk is a fundamental constituent of contemporary financial systems. For the past decades a growing number of abrupt upsets in financial systems could be observed. Due to previous experiences, politicians and regulators prefer to identify the off enders outside the system or to blame...

Many economies in the world are characterised by a bank-based financial system, that is, the financial intermediation process is mostly performed by banks. It is therefore critically important to undertake a fully-fledged analysis of the banking sector with respect to financial stability risks....