Attributing systemic risk to individual institutions

BIS Working Papers  |  No 308  | 
17 May 2010

Abstract:

An operational macroprudential approach to financial stability requires tools that attribute system-wide risk to individual institutions. Making use of constructs from game theory, we propose an attribution methodology that has a number of appealing features: it can be used in conjunction with popular risk measures, it provides measures of institutions’ systemic importance that add up exactly to the measure of system-wide risk and it easily accommodates uncertainty about the validity of the risk model. We apply this methodology to a number of constructed examples and illustrate the interactions between drivers of systemic importance: size, the institution’s risk profile and strength of exposures to common risk factors. We also demonstrate how the methodology can be used for the calibration of macroprudential capital rules.

JEL Classification: C15, C71, G20, G28.

Keywords: Systemic importance, macroprudential approach, Shapley value

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BIS or its member central banks.