International Capital Mobility and Financial Fragility - Part 1. Drivers of Systemic Banking Crises: The Role of Bank-Balance-Sheet Contagion and Financial Account Structure

Rudiger Ahrend and Antoine Goujard

No 902, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: This paper examines whether the composition of a country’s external liabilities and assets has an incidence on its risk of suffering financial turmoil. Particular emphasis is put on the role of international financial integration, using newly-constructed measures of contagion shocks. These new measures capture well the contagion observed e.g. in the wake of the Mexican and Asian crises, and confirm that contagion shocks observed in 2009/10 dwarfed those observed during previous financial crises. Using a panel of 184 developed and emerging economies from 1970 to 2009, the empirical analysis finds that the structure of the financial account has an important influence on financial stability. A key result is that a bias in external liabilities towards debt strongly increases the risk of a systemic banking crisis. Moreover, certain forms of international financial integration are found to amplify contagion shocks and increase crisis risk, such as integration through international bank lending, and in particular through short-term bank debt.

Flux de capitaux internationaux et fragilité financière - Partie 1. Les déterminants des crises bancaires : Le rôle de la contagion par le système bancaire et de la structure du compte financier L’article étudie les effets de la structure des engagements et créances externes d’un pays sur sa stabilité financière. Une attention particulière est portée au rôle de l’intégration financière internationale. L’article propose de nouvelles mesures de la propagation des chocs par le système bancaire. Ces mesures capturent bien les chocs de contagion observés lors des crises mexicaine et asiatique. De plus, elles soulignent que les chocs de contagion liés à la crise financière de 2009/2010 sont d’un ordre de magnitude différent de ceux observés historiquement lors des crises financières. L’analyse empirique menée sur un panel de 184 pays développés et émergents de 1970 à 2009 confirme l’importance de la structure du compte financier pour la stabilité financière. En particulier, un biais de la structure de financement vers la dette augmente fortement la probabilité de crise bancaire. De plus, certaines formes d’intégration financière comme les besoins de financement externes des banques, en particulier à court-terme, amplifient les chocs de contagion et augmentent les risques de crises.

Keywords: balance sheet; banking crisis; banking system; compte financier; contagion; crise bancaire; dette extérieure; external debt; financial account; financial spillovers; financial stability; interdépendances financières; stabilité financière; système bancaire (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 F34 F36 G01 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cba and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:902-en

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