How Large Are Default Spillovers in the U.S. Financial System?

Fernando M. Duarte, Collin Jones, and Francisco Ruela

Second of two posts

When a financial firm suffers sufficiently high losses, it might default on its counterparties, who may in turn become unable to pay their own creditors, and so on. This “domino” or “cascade” effect can quickly propagate through the financial system, creating undesirable spillovers and unnecessary defaults. In this post, we use the framework that we discussed in “Assessing Contagion Risk in a Financial Network,” the first part of this two-part series, to answer the question: How vulnerable is the U.S. financial system to default spillovers?

Assessing Contagion Risk in a Financial Network

Fernando M. Duarte, Collin Jones, and Francisco Ruela

First of two posts

In compiling a list of key takeaways of the 2008 financial crisis, surely the dangers of counterparty risk would be near the top. During the crisis, speculation on which financial institution would be next to default on its obligations to creditors, and which one would come after that, dominated news cycles. Since then, there has been an explosion in research trying to understand and quantify the default spillovers that can arise through counterparty risk. This is the first of two posts delving into the analysis of financial network contagion through this spillover channel. Here we introduce a framework that is useful for thinking about default cascades, originally developed by Eisenberg and Noe.

What Can We Learn from the Timing of Interbank Payments?

Adam Copeland, Linsey Molloy, and Anya Tarascina



From 2008 to 2014 the Federal Reserve vastly increased the size of its balance sheet, mainly through its large-scale asset purchase programs (LSAPs). The resulting abundance of reserves affected the financial system in a number of ways, including by changing the intraday timing of interbank payments. In this post we show that (1) there appears to be a nonlinear relationship between the amount of reserves in the system and the timing of interbank payments, and (2) with the increase in reserves, smaller banks shifted their timing of payments more significantly than larger banks did. This result suggests that tracking the timing of payments sent by banks could provide an informative signal about the impact of the shrinking Federal Reserve balance sheet on the payments system.

Post-Crisis Financial Regulation: Experiences from Both Sides of the Atlantic

Nicola Cetorelli, Stephanie Clampitt, Giovanni Majnoni d’Intignano, and Valerio Vacca



To mark the 100-year anniversary of the Banca d’Italia’s New York office, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Banca d’Italia hosted a workshop on post-crisis financial regulation in November 2018. The goal of the workshop was to discuss differences in regulation between the United States and Europe (and around the globe more broadly), examine gaps in current regulations, identify challenges to be addressed, and raise awareness about the unintended consequences of regulation. The workshop included presentations by researchers from the U.S. and Europe on such topics as market liquidity, funding, and capital requirements. In this post, we present some of the findings and discussions from the workshop.

The Indirect Costs of Lehman’s Bankruptcy

Erin Denison, Michael J. Fleming, and Asani Sarkar

Fifth of five posts

In our previous post, we assessed losses to customers and clients from foregone opportunities after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. In this post, we examine losses to Lehman and its investors in anticipation of bankruptcy. For example, if bankruptcy is expected, Lehman’s earnings may decline as customers close their accounts or certain securities (such as derivatives) to which Lehman is a counterparty may lose value. We estimate these losses by analyzing Lehman’s earnings and stock, bond, and credit default swap (CDS) prices.

Customer and Employee Losses in Lehman’s Bankruptcy

Erin Denison, Michael J. Fleming, and Asani Sarkar

Fourth of five posts

In our second post on the Lehman bankruptcy, we discussed the cost to Lehman’s creditors from having their funds tied up in bankruptcy proceedings. In this post, we focus on losses to Lehman’s customers and employees from the destruction of firm-specific assets that could not be deployed as productively with other firms. Our conclusions are based in part on what happened after bankruptcy—whether, for example, customer accounts moved to other firms or employees found jobs elsewhere. While these costs are difficult to pin down, the analysis suggests that the most notable losses were borne by mutual funds that relied on Lehman’s specialized brokerage advice and firms that employed Lehman for its equity underwriting services.

Lehman’s Bankruptcy Expenses

Erin Denison, Michael J. Fleming, and Asani Sarkar

Third of five posts

In bankruptcy, firms incur expenses for services provided by lawyers, accountants, and other professionals. Such expenses can be quite high, especially for complex resolutions. These direct costs of bankruptcy proceedings reduce a firm’s value below its fundamental level, thus constituting a “deadweight loss.” Bankruptcy also carries indirect costs, such as the loss in value of assets trapped in bankruptcy—a subject discussed in our previous post. In this post, we provide the first comprehensive estimates of the direct costs of resolving Lehman Brothers’ holding company (LBHI) and its affiliates under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, and of Lehman’s broker-dealer (LBI) under the Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA).

Creditor Recovery in Lehman’s Bankruptcy

Erin Denison, Michael J. Fleming, and Asani Sarkar

Second of five posts

Expectations of creditor recovery were low when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy process started. On the day the firm filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, the average price of Lehman’s senior bonds implied a recovery rate of about 30 percent for senior creditors. A month later the bond price was implying a recovery rate of 9 percent, consistent with results from Lehman’s CDS auction. Two and a half years later, Lehman’s estate estimated that the recovery rate for holding company creditors would be just 16 percent. So, ten years after the filing, how much did creditors actually recover?

How Much Value Was Destroyed by the Lehman Bankruptcy?

Erin Denison, Michael J. Fleming, and Asani Sarkar

First of five posts

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008, initiating one of the largest and most complex bankruptcy proceedings in history. Recovery prospects for creditors, who submitted about $1.2 trillion of claims against the Lehman estate, were quite bleak. This week, we will publish a series of four posts that provide an assessment of the value lost to Lehman, its creditors, and other stakeholders now that the bankruptcy proceedings are winding down. Where appropriate, we also consider the liquidation of Lehman’s investment banking affiliate, which occurred in separate proceedings under the Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA).

Coming to Terms with Operational Risk

Gara M. Afonso, Filippo Curti, and Atanas Mihov



The term “operational risk” often evokes images of catastrophic events like hurricanes and earthquakes. For financial institutions, however, operational risk has a broader scope, encompassing losses related to fraud, rogue trading, product misrepresentation, computer and system failures, and cyberattacks, among other things. In this blog post, we discuss how operational risk has come into greater focus over the past two decades—to the point that it now accounts for more than a quarter of financial institutions’ regulatory capital.