Clearing mechanism in real and financial markets

The present thesis is a collection of contributions concerning the application of the clearing principle in real and financial markets. In particular, two issues are deepened. The first concerns the effect of bilateral clearing of interbank deposits in the reduction of systemic risk. The second focuses on the endogenous formation process of clearing houses that manage payments. The methodology applied in the three contributions is the network analysis combined with agent-based models and computer simulations. The work is structured in four sections. The first defines and describes the more popular clearing agreements from a legal and economic point of view and provides a presentation of the three collected papers. The second section investigates the effect of bilateral netting on financial stability during a liquidity crisis. The third section analyzes how bilateral netting affects the resilience of an interbank credit network in the event of a shock affecting the assets of an intermediary. The fourth section analyzes the endogenous formation of clearing houses in both corporate barter circuits and interbank payment networks.