Industry Characteristics and Financial Risk Spillovers

This paper proposes a new measure of tail risk spillover. The empirical application provides evidence of significant volatility and tail risk spillovers from the financial sector to many real economy sectors in the U.S. economy in the period from 2001 to 2011. These spillovers increase in crisis periods. The conditional coexceedance in a given sector is positively related to its amount of debt financing, and negatively related to its relative valuation and investment. Real economy sectors which require substantial external financing, and whose value and investment activity are relatively lower, are prime candidates for depreciation in the wake of crisis in the financial sector.