CONTAGION RISK IN AN EVOLVING NETWORK MODEL OF BANKING SYSTEMS

This paper develops an analytical model of contagion risk in banking systems with tiered structure. It explores the respective effects of banking network structure and bank activity on contagion risk in banking network evolution. The findings suggest that increasing interbank connections is conducive to handling banking crisis and reducing the effect of contagion risk, but its positive effect is limited; raising bank reserve ratio will enhance the stability of individual banks to a certain extent, but it may immediately lead to liquidity problems for banks that have less excess reserves, causing the occurrence of contagion risk; an excessive drive for risk assets with high return may bring high risk to banks and lead to instability of banking systems; the bank risk preference is crucial to the stability of banking systems, and the radicalness of it may lead to greater systemic instability.