Financial Contagion in Industrial Clusters: A Dynamical Analysis and Network Simulation

In this work we analyse the resilience of industrial districts to exogenous economic shocks. Firstly, we define a basic industrial district through a set of assumptions which prove to be critical for systemic risk in the event of a financial shock. In the course of the work we progressively relax the assumptions to make room for more complex representations. Consequently, depending on two dimensions of complexity (structure of economic interactions and the degree of heterogeneity of the industrial population), we develop three different models of industrial clusters, employing non-linear ordinary differential equations and percolation dynamics in graph theory. A mechanism of financial contagion is introduced and a threshold condition is derived in order to study each model’s resilience. Eventually, we prove that it is the structure of economic interactions which produces a structural change in the threshold characterization.