Review of Financial Studies Vol. 30 No. 1 2017

Measuring Systemic Risk

Viral V. Acharya^1,2; Lasse Heje Pedersen^2,1; Thomas Philippon^2,1; Matthew Richardson^1,2

¹ New York University · ² Center for Economic and Policy Research

Abstract

We present an economic model of systemic risk in which undercapitalization of the financial sector as a whole is assumed to harm the real economy, leading to a systemic risk externality. Each financial institution's contribution to systemic risk can be measured as its systemic expected shortfall (SES), that is, its propensity to be undercapitalized when the system as a whole is undercapitalized. SES increases in the institution's leverage and its marginal expected shortfall (MES), that is, its losses in the tail of the system's loss distribution. We demonstrate empirically the ability of components of SES to predict emerging systemic risk during the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

DOI

10.1093/rfs/hhw088

Volume

30

Issue

1

Pages

2-47

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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