Financial Connections and Systemic Risk

We are grateful to Piero Gottardi, Iftekhar Hasan, John Kambhu, Fernando Vega Redondo and participants at presentations at the NBER Meetings in July 2009, the NBER Financial Institutions and Market Risk Conference in June 2010, our discussants there Mark Carey and Mark Flannery, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, the European University Institute, the Huntsman School of Business, the Thammasat Business School, Tilburg University, the University of Naples Federico II, the University of South Florida and the University of Pennsylvania for helpful comments. We also thank the Sloan Foundation for financial support. The corresponding author is Franklin Allen with e-mail allenf@wharton.upenn.edu. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.