Evidence from the main Colombian payment and settlement systems verifies that local financial networks have self-organized into a modular (i.e. clustered) scale-free (i.e. inhomogeneous) architecture that favors everyday robustness and performance in exchange for rare episodes of fragility but...

This paper studies the effect of new fund flows on investment behavior and the resulting equilibrium price of risk. The Small Fund Industry model shows equilibria with overinvestment in unprofitable and underinvestment in profitable investment opportunities. The Large Fund Industry model derives...

This paper addresses the discussion between economic power and the power of politics with particular focus on financial markets. After general reflections about the economic basis of power, the paper discusses in a general equilibrium framework how financial innovations can lead to risk creation...

In this paper we examine the quantitative effects of margin regulation on volatility in asset markets. We consider a general equilibrium in finite-horizon economy with heterogeneous agents and collateral constraints. There are two assets in the economy which can be used as collateral for...

During the past forty years, the simultaneous, symbiotic growth of financial innovation, disintermediation and deregulation has created an environment with extremely complex, opaque investment instruments. That system has now collapsed. At the very center of the crisis are a small group of...

I construct a model of over-the-counter (OTC) trading to study equilibrium allocation properties under bilateral clearing (BC) and central counterparty (CCP) clearing of OTC derivatives. I show how CCP mutualizes individual counterparty exposures and prevents massive equilibrium defaults. I...

In this paper we examine the quantitative effects of margin regulation on volatility in asset markets. We consider a general equilibrium infinite-horizon economy with heterogeneous agents and collateral constraints. There are two assets in the economy which can be used as collateral for...

Lynn Stout's paper on Risk, Speculation, and OTC Derivatives: An Inaugural Essay for Convivium develops an insightful legal-economic analysis of speculative trading. From one hand, the paper discusses the legal-economic framework of speculation and its recent transformation, making reference to...

We model the asset-opacity choice of an intermediary subject to rollover risk in wholesale funding markets. Greater opacity means investors form more dispersed beliefs about an intermediary’s profitability. The endogenous benefit of opacity is lower fragility when profitability is expected to...