IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2013s-29.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Systemic Risk in the Financial Industry: “Mimetism” for the Best and for the Worst

Author

Listed:
  • Thierry Warin
  • Robert E. Prasch

Abstract

In the wake of the worst financial crisis since 1929, economists are revisiting the received understanding of how financial markets and institutions actually operate. This paper aims to contribute to this reexamination. It builds upon the traditional and widely-accepted mean-variance approach to the processing of information under conditions of risk while reconsidering an inadequately contemplated premise: the actual organization of the financial market. Now, a lot has been said about perverse incentives and contracting arrangements, firms with oligopolistic power, the pricing and market advantages of being too big to fail, and the associated inefficiencies of the regulatory and supervision systems. While we believe that much of that work is valid, we also believe that too little has been done to meld modern portfolio theory (MPT) with insights that can be drawn from recent developments in Industrial Organization. In the model presented here, the MPT finds its place through the "coordination"" mechanism, which is the transmission of financial information among agents. The IO perspective finds its place in our model through a variable capturing the fragility of the system: the probability that the quality of information can itself be altered by the system's ""complexity,"" which in its extreme from can be described as ""opacity."""

Suggested Citation

  • Thierry Warin & Robert E. Prasch, 2013. "Systemic Risk in the Financial Industry: “Mimetism” for the Best and for the Worst," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-29, CIRANO.
    • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2013s-29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2013s-29.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran, 2010. "Financial Regulation in the Crisis Regulation, Market Discipline, Internal Control: The Big Three in turmoil," Post-Print hal-00627436, HAL.
    2. Warin Thierry & Blakely Andrew, 2012. "Choice or Mimetism in the Decision to Migrate? A European Illustration," Global Economy Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 1-32, June.
    3. Robert E. Prasch, 2010. "Bankers Gone Wild: The Crash of 2008," Chapters, in: Steven Kates (ed.), Macroeconomic Theory and its Failings, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Andre Fourcans & Thierry Warin, 2010. "Tax competition and information sharing in Europe: a signalling game," International Journal of Economics and Business Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 2(1/2), pages 76-86.
    5. Arestis, Philip & Basu, Santonu, 2004. "Financial globalisation and regulation," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 129-140, June.
    6. Jezabel Couppey-Soubeyran, 2010. "Financial Regulation in the Crisis Regulation, Market Discipline, Internal Control: the Big Three in Turmoil," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 123, pages 13-29.
    7. Whitehead, Charles, 2010. "Reframing Financial Regulation," Journal of Financial Transformation, Capco Institute, vol. 29, pages 57-69.
    8. Charles J. Whalen, 2001. "Integrating Schumpeter and Keynes: Hyman Minsky’s Theory of Capitalist Development," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 805-823, December.
    9. F. E. Balderston, 1966. "Financial Regulation as a Control System Problem: The Case of the Savings & Loan Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(10), pages 417-432, June.
    10. Robert E. Prasch & Thierry Warin, 2012. "Moral Hazard and the Mounting of a Crisis: A U.S. Narrative," CIRANO For discussion... 2012dt-03, CIRANO.
    11. Coskun, Yener, 2011. "Financial Engineering and Engineering of Financial Regulation," MPRA Paper 34838, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meier, Samira & Rodriguez Gonzalez, Miguel & Kunze, Frederik, 2021. "The global financial crisis, the EMU sovereign debt crisis and international financial regulation: lessons from a systematic literature review," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    2. Robert E. Prasch & Thierry Warin, 2012. "Moral Hazard and the Mounting of a Crisis: A U.S. Narrative," CIRANO For discussion... 2012dt-03, CIRANO.
    3. Paul NINGAYE & Virginia Takoutio FEUDJIO, 2014. "Bankruptcy, financial liberalization, and efficiency of commercial banks in Cameroon," EuroEconomica, Danubius University of Galati, issue 2(33), pages 119-134, November.
    4. Sushanta Mallick & Brigitte Granville, 2005. "How best to link poverty reduction and debt sustainability in IMF-World Bank models?," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 67-85.
    5. Engelbert Stockhammer & Karsten Kohler, 2023. "Learning from distant cousins? Post-Keynesian Economics, Comparative Political Economy, and the Growth Models approach," Chapters, in: Thomas Palley & Esteban Pérez Caldentey & Matías Vernengo (ed.), Varieties of Capitalism, chapter 3, pages 56-75, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Saoussen Ben Gamra & Mickaël Clévenot, 2006. "Libéralisation financière et crises bancaires dans les pays émergents," Working Papers hal-00188615, HAL.
    7. Moshirian, Fariborz, 2008. "Financial services in an increasingly integrated global financial market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 2288-2292, November.
    8. Tristan Auvray & Cédric Durand & Joel Rabinovich & Cecilia Rikap, 2021. "Corporate financialization’s conservation and transformation: from Mark I to Mark II," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 431-457, December.
    9. Fetiniuc Valentina & Luchian Ivan, 2013. "Modern Features of Financial Globalization," Annals of the University of Petrosani, Economics, University of Petrosani, Romania, vol. 13(1), pages 117-128.
    10. Philip Arestis & Panicos Demetriades & Bassam Fattouh, 2003. "Financial Policies and the Aggregate Productivity of the Capital Stock: Evidence from Developed and Developing Economies," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 217-242, Spring.
    11. Eckhard Hein, 2010. "Shareholder Value Orientation, Distribution And Growth—Short‐ And Medium‐Run Effects In A Kaleckian Model," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 302-332, May.
    12. Deluna, Roperto Jr & Chelly, Antiquisa, 2014. "Economic Growth, Financial and Trade Globalization in the Philippines: A Vector Autoregressive Analysis," MPRA Paper 60206, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Armin J. Kammel, 2005. "A Proposal for the Governance of Financial Regulation and Supervision in Europe," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 74(4), pages 167-181.
    14. Ludo Peeters, 2011. "Controlling For Heterogeneity And Asymmetry In Cross-Section Gravity Models Of Aggregate Migration: Evidence From Mexico," ERSA conference papers ersa10p329, European Regional Science Association.
    15. Charles J. Whalen, 2020. "Post-Keynesian institutionalism: past, present, and future," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 71-92, January.
    16. Juan Laborda & Vicente Salas & Cristina Suárez, 2021. "Financial constraints on R&D projects and minsky moments: containing the credit cycle," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 1089-1111, September.
    17. Shukayev, Malik & Ueberfeldt, Alexander, 2021. "Are Bank Bailouts Welfare Improving?," Working Papers 2021-10, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    18. Tristan Auvray & Cédric Durand & Joel Rabinovich & Cecilia Rikap, 2020. "Financialization's conservation and transformation: from Mark I to Mark II," Working Papers hal-03079425, HAL.
    19. Ponsot, Jean-François, 2016. "The “four I's” of the international monetary system and the international role of the euro," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 299-308.
    20. Charles J. Whalen (ed.), 2011. "Financial Instability and Economic Security after the Great Recession," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14489, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    systemic risk; specific risk; systematic risk; financial industry; modern portfolio theory; complexity; opacity; Minsky moment; complex systems;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2013s-29. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.