The Topology of Interbank Payment Flows - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK

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Staff Reports

The Topology of Interbank Payment Flows

March 2006 Number 243

JEL classification: E59 , E58, G1

Authors: Kimmo Soramäki, Morten L. Bech, Jeffrey Arnold, Robert J. Glass, and Walter E. Beyeler

We explore the network topology of the interbank payments transferred between commercial banks over the Fedwire^® Funds Service. We find that the network is compact despite low connectivity. The network includes a tightly connected core of money-center banks to which all other banks connect. The degree distribution is scale-free over a substantial range. We find that the properties of the network changed considerably in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Available only in PDF PDF

13 pages / 558 kb

For a published version of this report, see Kimmo Soramäki, Morten L. Bech, Jeffrey Arnold, RobertJ.Glass, and Walter E. Beyeler, "The Topology of Interbank Payment Flows," Physica A:
Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications 379, no. 1 (June 2007): 317-33.

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