Interconnectedness of the banking sector as a vulnerability to crises

This paper uses macro-networks to measure the interconnectedness of the banking sector, and relates it to banking crises in Europe. Beyond cross-border financial linkages of the banking sector, macro-networks also account for financial linkages to the other main financial and non-financial sectors within the economy. We enrich conventional early-warning models using macro-financial vulnerabilities, by including network measures of banking sector as potential determinants of banking crises. Our results show that a more central position of the banking sector in the macro-network significantly increases the probability of a banking crisis. By analyzing the different types of risk exposures, our evidence shows that credit is an important source of vulnerability. Finally, the results show that early-warning models augmented with interconnectedness measures outperform traditional models in terms of out-of-sample predictions of recent banking crises in Europe.

PELTONEN Tuomas;  RANCAN Michela;  SARLIN Peter; 

2016-01-05

European Central Bank

JRC97037

978-92-899-1679-0,   

1725-2806,   

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp1866.en.pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97037,   

10.2866/446196,