Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 116
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-60966-0

Regular Article

Social network structures and bank runs

School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, P.R. China

^a e-mail: lijiaheng@seu.edu.cn

Received: 17 December 2015
Received in final form: 17 February 2016
Published online: 12 May 2016

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of social network structures of depositors on bank runs. The analyzed network structures include random networks, small-world networks and scale-free networks. Simulation results show that the probability of bank run occurrence in random networks is larger than that in small-world networks, but the probability of bank run occurrence in scale-free networks drops from the highest to the lowest among the three types of network structures with the increase of the proportion of impatient depositors. The average degree of depositor networks has a significant impact on bank runs, but this impact is related to the proportion of impatient depositors and the confidence levels of depositors in banks.