Title
Suffocating Fire Sales
Abstract
Fire sales are among the major drivers of market instability in modern financial systems. Due to iterated distressed selling and the associated price impact, initial shocks to some institutions can be amplified dramatically through the network induced by portfolio overlaps. In this paper, we develop a mathematical framework that allows us to investigate central characteristics that drive or hinder the propagation of distress. We investigate single systems as well as ensembles of systems that are alike, where similarity is measured in terms of the empirical distribution of all defining properties of a system. This asymptotic approach ensures a great deal of robustness to statistical uncertainty and temporal fluctuations. A characterization of those systems that are resilient to small shocks emerges, and we provide criteria that regulators might exploit in order to assess the stability of a financial system. We illustrate the application of these criteria for some exemplary configurations in the context of capital requirements and test the applicability of our results for systems of moderate size by Monte Carlo simulations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1137/20M1379800
SIAM JOURNAL ON FINANCIAL MATHEMATICS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
systemic risk, fire sales, large financial systems
Journal
13
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
1945-497X
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Detering Nils100.34
Thilo Meyer-Brandis242.02
Konstantinos Panagiotou329027.80
Ritter Daniel400.34