The breakdown of the interbank market was a critical moment in the unfolding of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We argue that the adequate pricing of risks is critical for the functioning of a market of such vital importance as the interbank market. We use a unique panel data set that allows us to quantify counterparty risk and different types of systemic risks associated with interbank exposures. We use a simultaneous equation model for interbank lending and deposit rates to study whether counterparty risk and systemic risk are adequately priced. As expected, we find that riskier banks on average pay a higher deposit rate. However, on average, banks grant a discount in their lending rates to riskier banks. For systemic risk, we also find mixed results. The positive effect on the deposit rate declines, but the negative effect on the lending rate remains. We argue that the mixed results regarding the pricing of systemic risk might ex-post justify parts of the Basel III reform package that forces systemically important banks to hold higher capital buffers.

Financial regulation has introduced bail-ins (i.e. enforced debt-to-equity swaps) as a tool for orderly bank resolution, and hence it is the authorities’ task to decide when to apply this tool in a resolution. We present a quantitative framework to support this decision by computing the systemic impact of a bail-in. Our model takes into account systemic feedback effects using state-of-the-art multilayer contagion models, which we extend to include liquidation losses. Using real-world data for the Austrian banking system, we perform an empirical assessment of the systemic risk impact of idiosyncratic and systemic shocks. Our results show that bail-ins have the potential to reduce systemic risk compared to insolvencies for the Austrian banking system. They also incur lower social cost than bail-outs, but only for moderate, idiosyncratic crises. Our findings quantitatively corroborate earlier discussions that bail-ins may be an inadequate tool to deal with systemic crises. This suggests that the bail-in mechanism alone may not be sufficient to rule out future bail-outs.