No. 1050 - Contagion and fire sales in banking networks

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by Sara Cecchetti, Marco Rocco and Laura SigalottiJanuary 2016

The paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the connection between the structure of banking networks and their resilience to systemic shocks. We base our analysis on the model of interbank contagion proposed by Cifuentes, Ferrucci and Shin (2005), which accounts for the impact of illiquid assets' fire sales. We develop this model along three main lines: (i) analytically proving, in a general setting, the existence of an equilibrium and the convergence of the algorithm that can be used to compute it; (ii) extending the scope of the simulations (e.g., including an assessment of the resilience of different stylized network topologies and a sensitivity analysis); (iii) generalizing the model to deal with the case where more than one illiquid asset is available on the market.

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