This paper proposes a nonparametric test for conditional independence that is easy to implement, yet powerful in the sense that it is consistent and achieves n^{-1/2} local power. The test statistic is based on an estimator of the topological "distance" between restricted and unrestricted...

Financial contagion and systemic risk measures are commonly derived from conditional quantiles by using imposed model assumptions such as a linear parametrization. In this paper, we provide model free measures for contagion and systemic risk which are independent of the specifcation of...