The recent credit crisis of 2007/08 has raised a debate about the so-called knife-edge properties of financial markets. The paper contributes to the debate shedding light on the controversial relation between risk-diversification and financial stability. We model a financial network where assets...

Excessive leverage, i.e. the abuse of debt financing, is considered one of the primary factors in the default of financial institutions. Systemic risk results from correlations between individual default probabilities that cannot be considered independent. Based on the structural framework by...