Ippolito Filippo, adjunct lecturer at the UPF Department of Economics and Business is the leader of the project entitled "Asset-liability correlated fragility in banks", which on 5 March won the Aid to Research grant, awarded by the UCEIF Foundation. The study analyses the relationship between banks' liquidity, credit lines and the granting of loans, starting from the European interbank market freeze in 2007.

The project is based on the double-run situation suffered by Italy in the summer of 2007 as a result of market uncertainties. Banks' fear to lend to each other caused interbank deposits to shrink and, at the same time, concern for the arrival of a credit crunch caused lenders to withdraw the credit lines available.

The aim of the research is, therefore, to examine the risk faced by banks of falling into a double-run situation like that exhibited by the Italians. "While banks are aware of this risk and actively manage it, this situation continues to represent a major source of fragility for financial institutions", says Ippolito Filippo, the principal investigator of the project.

For Filippo, receiving aid from the UCEIF Foundation "is important because it demonstrates that the issues dealt with by our research are of great interest not only for academics, but also for the financial and real sectors".

The lecturers of the Department of Economics and Business, José-Luis Peydró and Andrea Polo, and researcher of the Research Department of the Bank of Italy, Enrico Sette, are also involved in this research project which, according to Ippolito Filippo, is essential "to emphasize the importance of a key source of fragility in the financial institutions".

Prizes to encourage research into finance

The UCEIF Foundation, which chose the project led by Filippo from among more than twenty papers, rewarded doctoral theses and research projects that best deepen the origin of the crisis and the mechanisms of systemic risk, the impact of banks' liquidity, their fragility in the real economy and the behaviour of derived products.

The prizes were awarded by the director of the Foundation, Francisco Martínez García; the president of Cantabria, Ignacio Diego; the rector of the University of Cantabria (UC), José Carlos Gómez Sal, and the regional director of Banco Santander, Carlos Hazas.

Created in 2006, the University of Cantabria Foundation for Study and Research in the Financial Sector (UCEIF) is the result of an agreement between the University of Cantabria and Banco Santander. Its goals, among others, are to carry out research in the financial field and promote study, research and training in the social and economic sphere.

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