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Does interconnectedness improve market quality? Yes. We develop an alternative network structure, the assets network: assets are connected if they are held by the same investors. We use several large datasets to build the assets network for the corporate bond market. Through careful identification strategies based on the COVID-19 shock and "fallen angels," we find that interconnectedness improves market quality especially during stress periods. Our findings contribute to the debate on the role of interconnectedness in financial markets and show that highly interconnected corporate bonds allow for risk sharing and require a lower compensation for risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As individuals communicate, their exchanges form a dynamic network. We demonstrate, using time series analysis of communication in three online settings, that network structure alone can be highly revealing of the diversity and novelty of the information being communicated. Our approach uses both standard and novel network metrics to characterize how unexpected a network configuration is, and to capture a network's ability to conduct information. We find that networks with a higher conductance in link structure exhibit higher information entropy, while unexpected network configurations can be tied to information novelty. We use a simulation model to explain the observed correspondence between the evolution of a network's structure and the information it carries., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures V2 includes a simulation model; Proc. 4th International Conference on Web Science (WebSci'11), 2012

We analyze the content of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) communications and whether it provides information to the crude oil market. To this end, we derive an empirical strategy which allows us to measure OPEC's public signal and test whether market participants find it credible. Using Structural Topic Models, we analyze OPEC narratives and identify several topics related to fundamental factors, such as demand, supply, and speculative activity in the crude oil market. Importantly, we find that OPEC communication reduces oil price volatility and prompts market participants to rebalance their positions. Our analysis indicates that market participants assess OPEC communications as providing an important signal to the crude oil market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network analysis has demonstrated that interconnectedness among market participants results in spillovers, amplifies or absorbs shocks, and creates other nonlinear effects that ultimately affect market health. In this paper, we propose a new directed network construct, the liquidity network, to capture the urgency to trade by connecting the initiating party in a trade to the passive party. Alongside the conventional trading network connecting sellers to buyers, we show both network types complement each other: Liquidity networks reveal valuable information, particularly when information asymmetry in the market is high, and provide a more comprehensive characterization of interconnectivity in the overnight-lending market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent financial crisis has focused attention on identifying and measuring systemic risk. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to estimate the portfolio composition of banks as function of daily interbank trades and stock returns. While banks' assets are reported to regulators and/or the public at relatively low frequencies (e.g. quarterly or annually), our approach estimates bank asset holdings at higher frequencies allowing us to derive precise estimates of (i) portfolio concentration within each bank (a measure of diversification) and (ii) common holdings across banks (a measure of market susceptibility to propagating shocks). We find evidence that systemic risk measures derived from our approach lead, in a forecasting sense, several commonly used systemic risk indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how banks manage their default risk before bilaterally negotiating the quantities and prices of over-the-counter (OTC) contracts resembling credit default swaps (CDSs). We show that the costly actions exerted by banks to reduce their default probabilities are not socially optimal. Depending on the imposed trade size limits, risk-management costs and sellers' bargaining power, banks may switch from choosing default risk levels above the social optimum to reducing them even below the social optimum. We use a unique and comprehensive data set of bilateral exposures from the CDS market to test the main model implications on the OTC market structure: (i) intermediation is done by low-risk banks with medium credit exposure; (ii) all banks with high credit exposures are net buyers of CDSs, and low-risk banks with low credit exposures are the main net sellers; and (iii) heterogeneity in post-trade credit exposures is higher for riskier banks and smaller for safer banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the behavior of the interbank market before, during and after the 2008 financial crisis. Leveraging recent advances in network analysis, we study two network structures, a correlation network based on publicly traded bank returns, and a physical network based on interbank lending transactions. While the two networks behave similarly pre-crisis, during the crisis the correlation network shows an increase in interconnectedness while the physical network highlights a marked decrease in interconnectedness. Moreover, these networks respond differently to monetary and macroeconomic shocks. Physical networks forecast liquidity problems while correlation networks forecast financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]