Amsterdam TI Finance Research Seminars

Speaker(s)
Kathy Yuan (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Date
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Location
Amsterdam

This paper studies whether the structural properties of interbank networks affect individual banks’ liquidity holding decisions. In a simultaneous game of liquidity provision on a network, we show that, at the Nash equilibrium, the contributions of each bank to the network liquidity level and liquidity risk are distinct functions of its indegree and outdegree Katz-Bonacich centrality measures. The equilibrium system liquidity level and volatility are determined by the network links, risk aversion of banks, and the availability of collateralized and uncollateralized borrowing. Using a sterling interbank network database from January 2006 to September 2010, we estimate the model in a spatial error framework, and find evidence for a substantial, and time varying, network risk: in the period before the Lehman crisis, the network is cohesive and liquidity holding decisions are complementary and there is a large network liquidity multiplier; during the 2007-08 crisis, the network becomes less clustered and liquidity holding less dependent on the network; after the crisis, during Quantitative Easing, the network liquidity multiplier becomes negative, implying a lower network potential for generating liquidity. The network impulse-response functions indicate that the risk key players during these periods vary, and are not necessarily the largest borrowers.