This paper draws on network theory to investigate European banks' sovereign debt exposures. Banks' holdings of sovereign debt build a network of financial linkages with European countries that exhibits a long-tail distribution of node degrees. A highly connected network core of 15 banks is...

The Euro area has a unique monetary authority that governs money creation, but several individual-countries’ sovereign debts that differ in terms of safety. We analyse: i) the interactions between the financial and real sector in such an environment; ii) the role of government bonds as...