Hedge funds have become important players in the U.S. & global capital markets. These largely unregulated funds use: a variety of complex trading strategies & instruments, in their liberal use of leverage, in their opacity to outsiders, & in their convex compensation structure. These differences can exacerbate market failures associated with agency problems, externalities, & moral hazard. Counterparty credit risk mgmt. (CCRM) practices are the first line of defense against market disruptions with potential systemic consequences. This article examines how the unique nature of hedge funds may generate market failures that make CCRM for exposures to the funds intrinsically more difficult to manage, both for regulated institutions & for policymakers. Ill.

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 2,0, Berlin School of Economics and Law, language: English, abstract: Over the past decades the architecture of the financial system has undergone a significant change, whereby the alternative investment industry has claimed an ever increasing importance and popularity. Hedge funds have taken the leading role in this development. From a handful of hedge fund managers in the United States (U.S.), hedge funds have been growing to a worldwide business at the forefront of sophisticated financial innovation. Despite their rising success in the alternative investment industry, only a few subjects in the financial world appear to create such diverse opinions as hedge funds do. On the one hand, there are policy makers and academics, which appreciate and highlight hedge funds’ main role in increasing profits and effectively diversifying risks in traditional portfolios. Moreover, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve System (Fed), stated that hedge funds “have become major contributors to the flexibility of the financial system.” Provided with flexibility and light regulatory oversight, their participation in various markets has been proven important. Especially, due to the provision of liquidity, financial markets have become more efficient but also resilient by absorbing many financial shocks in past years, including the most recent financial crisis. On the other hand, there are also policy makers and academics, who claim that hedge funds are large enough to destabilize markets or even trigger financial crises. A common concern following the near failure of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998 is that one single hedge fund, as a highly leveraged investment pool, can create systemic risk to the worldwide financial system. Such ongoing concern about the vulnerability paired with the tremendous development and opaque nature of hedge funds, emphasize their potential threat to financial stability. Despite the fact that only little is known about these loosely regulated private investment pools, an unstudied reaction to 1998 is to regulate them. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to give the reader a better oversight and understanding of the hedge fund industry by deeply analyzing and discussing their beneficial characteristics but more importantly the issue of how they may be an essential threat to the financial system. Therefore, the paper is split into four main parts. The first part provides the reader with an overall picture of the unfolding of the hedge fund industry from the beginnings...

In a recently released New York Fed staff report, we present a forward-looking monitoring program to identify and track time-varying sources of systemic risk.

Until about twenty years ago, the consensus view on the cause of financial-system distress was fairly simple: a run on one bank could easily turn to a panic involving runs on all banks, destroying some and disrupting the financial system. Since then, however, a series of events—such as emerging-market debt crises, bond-market meltdowns, and the Long-Term Capital Management episode—has forced a rethinking of the risks facing financial institutions and the tools available to measure and manage these risks. The Risks of Financial Institutions examines the various risks affecting financial institutions and explores a variety of methods to help institutions and regulators more accurately measure and forecast risk. The contributors--from academic institutions, regulatory organizations, and banking--bring a wide range of perspectives and experience to the issue. The result is a volume that points a way forward to greater financial stability and better risk management of financial institutions.

This paper discusses the impact of the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the financial sector. It highlights the benefits these technologies bring in terms of financial deepening and efficiency, while raising concerns about its potential in widening the digital divide between advanced and developing economies. The paper advances the discussion on the impact of this technology by distilling and categorizing the unique risks that it could pose to the integrity and stability of the financial system, policy challenges, and potential regulatory approaches. The evolving nature of this technology and its application in finance means that the full extent of its strengths and weaknesses is yet to be fully understood. Given the risk of unexpected pitfalls, countries will need to strengthen prudential oversight.

In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the federal government has pursued significant regulatory reforms, including proposals to measure and monitor systemic risk. However, there is much debate about how this might be accomplished quantitatively and objectively—or whether this is even possible. A key issue is determining the appropriate trade-offs between risk and reward from a policy and social welfare perspective given the potential negative impact of crises. One of the first books to address the challenges of measuring statistical risk from a system-wide persepective, Quantifying Systemic Risk looks at the means of measuring systemic risk and explores alternative approaches. Among the topics discussed are the challenges of tying regulations to specific quantitative measures, the effects of learning and adaptation on the evolution of the market, and the distinction between the shocks that start a crisis and the mechanisms that enable it to grow.

The current Global Financial Stability Report (April 2016) finds that global financial stability risks have risen since the last report in October 2015. The new report finds that the outlook has deteriorated in advanced economies because of heightened uncertainty and setbacks to growth and confidence, while declines in oil and commodity prices and slower growth have kept risks elevated in emerging markets. These developments have tightened financial conditions, reduced risk appetite, raised credit risks, and stymied balance sheet repair. A broad-based policy response is needed to secure financial stability. Advanced economies must deal with crisis legacy issues, emerging markets need to bolster their resilience to global headwinds, and the resilience of market liquidity should be enhanced. The report also examines financial spillovers from emerging market economies and finds that they have risen substantially. This implies that when assessing macro-financial conditions, policymakers may need to increasingly take into account economic developments in emerging market economies. Finally, the report assesses changes in the systemic importance of insurers, finding that across advanced economies the contribution of life insurers to systemic risk has increased in recent years. The results suggest that supervisors and regulators should take a more macroprudential approach to the sector.