Evaluation of the post-crisis EU banking network connectedness in the global context

Abstract

Research background: The global banking network has been undergoing structural changes since the recent financial crisis. Previous studies on connectedness of global banking network during post-crisis period revealed the trends of regionalization and segmentation. Our previous research has also shown that during post-crisis period the level of regionalization within the EU banking network has increased; the network became more clustered and more decentralized. This paper continues our research of structural changes of EU banking network during post-crisis period by adding a global context and questioning the connectedness of EU banking network within global banking system. Purpose of the article: The aim of the paper is to evaluate the EU banking network's connectedness in the global context during the post-crisis period. Methods: network analysis method and data on yearly flows of BIS bilateral interbank crossborder claim were used to evaluate the connectedness of global and EU banking systems. Findings & Value added: Evaluation of the global banking network's connected-ness revealed that global banking network density decreased by 4.50%, suggesting that connectedness is decreasing, but it is happening slowly. Structural changes in the global banking network did happen during post-crisis period with regards to out-degree, betweenness and closeness centrality indicators. In the global context, the EU banking network became more connected during post-crisis period. The EU banking network was regionalized in 2011, but this regionalization disappeared in 2015, as the level of intraregional density decreased in 2015 and became lower than the interregional density. This research contributes to previous research in a way that it applies intraregional and interregional network density measures for evaluation of the EU banking network's connectedness, and analyses it as a subset of the global banking network.