SAFE Working Paper No. 29

Input-Output-Based Measures of Systemic Importance

The analyses of intersectoral linkages of Leontief (1941) and Hirschman (1958) provide a natural way to study the transmission of risk among interconnected banks and to measure their systemic importance. In this paper we show how classic input-output analysis can be applied to banking and how to derive six indicators that capture different aspects of systemic importance, using a simple numerical example for illustration. We also discuss the relationship with other approaches, most notably network centrality measures, both formally and by means of a simulated network.