Book Description

Shortly after the financial crisis of 2007-2008 many authors began to write about certain “huge institutions” potentially able to damage the entire financial system through negative shocks, approaching the issue of systemic risk in banking through the evaluation of the so called “Too-Big-to-Fail” actors. While the size of a bank is certainly a factor of risk when considering systemic implications, this book also explores the properties of some deeply interconnected institutions. The author’s main intuition is based on the renowned work by Mark Granovetter on “The Strength of Weak Ties” and “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness”: dangerous flows, like financial shocks, may travel very quickly through networks in unexpectedly efficient ways thanks to “Weak Ties”. The existence of weaker yet longer ties implies a naturally “robust yet fragile” network where even distant actors are closely interconnected, sharing both opportunities and risks. As a consequence, some nodes may act as key actors under the structural perspective. It is therefore critical for the central authority to identify and closely monitor said institutions. Thanks to a journey through the history of Social Network Analysis this book offers a complete overview on the evolution of the methodology and the most recent applications to systemic risk assessment, which are completed by a critical approach towards the “Too-Interconnected-to-Fail” perspective.