This paper presents the main features of macroprudential policy with a focus on the French case. We first recall the ultimate objective of this policy, which is to prevent and to mitigate systemic risk, i.e. the risk of “widespread disruptions to the provision of financial services that have...

The spectacular failure of the 150-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15th, 2008 was a major turning point in the global financial crisis that broke out in the summer 2007. Through the use of stock market data and Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads, this paper examines the...

Small and medium-sized enterprises are a centrepiece of Europe's economy. Due to their limited size and their generally lower creditworthiness, their access to financial market instruments is more limited than for large enterprises, which benefit from more elaborate Treasury operations,...

We measure the commonality in hedge fund returns, identify its main driving factor and analyze its implications for financial stability. We find that hedge funds’ commonality increased significantly from 2003 until 2006. We attribute this rise mainly to the increase in hedge funds’ exposure...

We study the problem of a leveraged investor that is forced to unwind a significant fraction of its portfolio in a collection of illiquid markets. It is shown that markets may become disrupted in response to a relatively small liquidity shock. As a consequence, the probability of default can be...

In response to the very large number of quantitative indicators that have been put forward to measure the level of systemic risk since the start of the subprime crisis, the paper surveys the different indicators available in the economic and financial literature. It distinguishes between (i)...

The shocks on a stochastic system can be defined by means of either distribution, or variable. We relate these approaches and provide the link between the global and local effects of both types of shocks. These methodologies are used to perform stress-tests on the portfolio of financial...

Risk aversion and uncertainty are often both at play in market price determination, but it is empirically challenging to disentangle one from the other. In this paper we set up a theoretical model particularly suited for opaque over-the-counter markets that is shown to be empirically tractable....