Management of systemic risk in financial markets is traditionally associated with setting (higher) capital requirements for market participants. There are indications that while equity ratios have been increased massively since the financial crisis, systemic risk levels might not have lowered,...

We study insolvency cascades in an interbank system when banks are allowed to insure their loans with credit default swaps (CDS) sold by other banks. We show that, by properly shifting financial exposures from one institution to another, a CDS market can be designed to rewire the network of...