We present a network model of the interbank market in which optimizing risk averse banks lend to each other and invest in non-liquid assets. Market clearing takes place through a tâtonnement process which yields the equilibrium price, while traded quantities are determined by means of a...

One of the several regulatory failures behind the global financial crisis that started in 2007 has been the regulatory focus on individual, rather than systemic, risk of financial institutions. Focusing on systemically important assets and liabilities (SIALs) rather than individual financial...

We examine the pricing of financial crash insurance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis in U.S. option markets. A large amount of aggregate tail risk is missing from the price of financial sector crash insurance during the financial crisis. The difference in costs of out-of-the-money put...

We propose a new theory of systemic risk based on Knightian uncertainty (or "ambiguity"). We show that, due to uncertainty aversion, beliefs on future asset returns are endogenous, and bad news on one asset class induces investors to be more pessimistic about other asset classes as well. This...

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context where banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. Moreover, higher capital may have an...

Systemic risk is modeled as the endogenously chosen correlation of returns on assets held by banks. The limited liability of banks and the presence of a negative externality of one bank’s failure on the health of other banks give rise to a systemic risk-shifting incentive where all banks...

Bank liquidity is a crucial determinant of the severity of banking crises. In this paper, we consider the effect of fire sales and foreign entry on banks' ex ante choice of liquid asset holdings, and the ex post resolution of crises. In a setting with limited pledgeability of risky cash flows...

Large banks often sell part of their loan portfolio in the form of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) to investors. In this paper we raise the question whether credit asset securitization affects the cyclicality (or commonality) of bank equity values. The commonality of bank equity values...

This Paper shows that bank closure policies suffer from a ‘too-many-to-fail’ problem: when the number of bank failures is large, the regulator finds it ex-post optimal to bail out some or all failed banks, whereas when the number of bank failures is small, failed banks can be acquired by the...