Prudential Policies and Systemic Risk: The Role of Interconnections

Abstract

The impact of prudential policies in open economies depends not only on their intrinsic efficacy but also on the feedback of the policy through close financial partners. Using a dataset of advanced countries, we find that prudential policy measures reduce systemic risk in the financial system in the 2000-2014 time period. We show that indirect effect in case of uniform interventions enforces the direct one and accounts for up to 87% of total risk reduction. The policies, though, remain insignificant for GIIPS countries, which stay dependent on actions and responses of their financial counterparties.

Keywords: systemic risk, prudential policy, banking regulation, network impact

JEL Classification: F44, G01, G15, G28