Bio

Radoslav Raykov is a Principal Researcher at the Financial Stability Department at the Bank of Canada. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Boston College. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked at the Boston Fed and taught at Harvard University.

His research interests focus broadly on financial stability, and in particular, on: systemic risk, banking regulation and reform, financial reform in derivatives markets and OTC derivatives markets, collateral and moral hazard in financial markets, the insurability of low-probability, high-impact risks, catastrophe insurance and risk diversification, and mechanism design.


Staff analytical notes

Considerations for the allocation of non-default losses by financial market infrastructures

Staff Analytical Note 2022-16 Daniele Costanzo, Radoslav Raykov
Non-default losses of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) have gained attention due to their potential impacts on FMIs and FMI participants, and the lack of a common approach to address them. A key question is, who should absorb these losses?

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Staff working papers

Decomposing Large Banks’ Systemic Trading Losses

Staff Working Paper 2024-6 Radoslav Raykov
Do banks realize simultaneous trading losses because they invest in the same assets, or because different assets are subject to the same macro shocks? This paper decomposes the comovements of bank trading losses into two orthogonal channels: portfolio overlap and common shocks.

Asymmetric Systemic Risk

Staff Working Paper 2022-19 Radoslav Raykov, Consuelo Silva-Buston
Bank regulation presumes risks spill over more easily from large banks to the banking system than vice versa. Interestingly, we observe this is not the case. We find that the capacity to transmit risk is larger in the system-to-bank direction, leading to an increased default risk.

Systemic Risk and Portfolio Diversification: Evidence from the Futures Market

Staff Working Paper 2021-50 Radoslav Raykov
This paper explores how the Canadian futures market contributed to banks’ systemic risk during the 2008 financial crisis. It finds that core banks as a whole traded against the periphery, in this way increasing their risk of simultaneous losses.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G2, G20

Systemic Risk and Collateral Adequacy

Staff Working Paper 2019-23 Radoslav Raykov
Many derivatives markets use collateral requirements calculated with industry-standard but dated methods that are not designed with systemic risk in mind. This paper explores whether the conservative nature of conventional collateral requirements outweighs their lack of consideration of systemic risk.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G2, G20

Multibank Holding Companies and Bank Stability

Staff Working Paper 2018-51 Radoslav Raykov, Consuelo Silva-Buston
This paper studies the relationship between bank holding company affiliation and the individual and systemic risk of banks. Using the 2005 hurricane season in the US as an exogenous shock to bank balance sheets, we show that banks that are part of a holding parent company are more resilient than independent banks.

Stability and Efficiency in Decentralized Two‐Sided Markets with Weak Preferences

Staff Working Paper 2017-4 Radoslav Raykov
Many decentralized markets are able to attain a stable outcome despite the absence of a central authority (Roth and Vande Vate, 1990). A stable matching, however, need not be efficient if preferences are weak. This raises the question whether a decentralized market with weak preferences can attain Pareto efficiency in the absence of a central matchmaker.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C7, C78, D, D6, D61

To Share or Not to Share? Uncovered Losses in a Derivatives Clearinghouse

Staff Working Paper 2016-4 Radoslav Raykov
This paper studies how the allocation of residual losses affects trading and welfare in a central counterparty. I compare loss sharing under two loss-allocation mechanisms – variation margin haircutting and cash calls – and study the privately and socially optimal degree of loss sharing.

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Journal publications

Refereed journal

  • "Systemic Risk and Collateral Adequacy: Evidence from the Futures Market" Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2021.
  • "Holding Company Affiliation and Bank Stability: Evidence from the US Banking Sector" (joint with Consuelo Silva-Buston) Journal of Corporate Finance, 65, December 2020.
  • “Risk Mutualization and Financial Stability: Recovering and Resolving a Central Counterparty”
    Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, 2018.
  • "Reducing Margin Procyclicality at Central Counterparties" Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, 7(2), 2018.
  • Catastrophe Insurance Equilibrium with Correlated Claims
    Theory and Decision, 2015.