The concentration of risk within the financial system leads to systemic instability. We propose a theory to explain the structure of the financial system and show how it alters the risk taking incentives of financial institutions when the government optimally intervenes during crises. By issuing...

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign's default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure...

An iconic model with high leverage and overvalued collateral assets is used to illustrate the amplification mechanism driving asset prices to 'overshoot' equilibrium when an asset bubble bursts--threatening widespread insolvency and what Richard Koo calls a 'balance sheet recession'