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Sovereign Stress Avalanches and Network Amplification in Latin America

Diego Vallarino

arXiv 8 Jun 2026 · physics.soc-ph

arXiv:2606.12460 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This paper studies sovereign stress avalanches and network amplification in Latin American credit markets using monthly J.P. Morgan EMBI Global Diversified spreads for eleven sovereigns over 2007-2026. Country stress events are defined as positive log-spread innovations exceeding country-specific volatility thresholds, and regional avalanches count the number of stressed countries in each month. The empirical design combines finite-sample power-law diagnostics, threshold robustness checks, a country-level reshuffling placebo, and rolling correlation, partial-correlation, and minimum-spanning-tree networks. Avalanche sizes are heavy-tailed, with an estimated exponent of 1.77, while spread changes and inter-event times lie in a heavy-tail boundary regime. The placebo shows synchronization far above independent stress timing, with p-values below 0.001. Large avalanches coincide with denser and more spectrally amplifying raw-correlation networks, but not after partial-correlation filtering, indicating common-factor co-movement rather than conditional regional propagation. Network metrics describe contemporaneous stress regimes rather than early-warning signals. The results provide a finite-size criticality framework for monitoring sovereign fragility in emerging markets.

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42
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80
in-text mentions
42
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
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5Bak, Per and Tang, Chao and Wiesenfeld, Kurt (1988) Self-Organized Criticality0.84333100%
6Bak, Per (1996) How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality0.84333100%
7Tumminello, Michele and Aste, Tomaso and Di Matteo, Tiziana and Mant… (2005) A Tool for Filtering Information in Complex Systems0.84333100%
8Vuong, Quang H (1989) Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-Nested Hypotheses0.84333100%
9Acemoglu, Daron and Carvalho, Vasco M. and Ozdaglar, Asuman and Tahb… (2012) The Network Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations0.64422100%
10Bak, Per and Chen, Kan and Scheinkman, José and Woodford, Michael (1993) Aggregate Fluctuations from Independent Sectoral Shocks: Self-Organized Criticality in a Model of Production and Inventory Dynam…0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 42 scored citations.