Samartín, MargaritaHasman, Augusto2010-04-152010-04-152008-10Journal of Banking & Finance, octubre 2008, Vol 32, No 10, p. 2136-21470378-4266https://hdl.handle.net/10016/7593This paper incorporates costly voluntary acquisition of information à la Nikitin and Smith (2007) [Nikitin, M., Smith, R.T., 2007. Information acquisition, coordination, and fundamentals in a financial crisis. Journal of Banking and Finance, in press, doi:10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.04.031], in a framework similar to Allen and Gale (2000) [Allen, F., Gale, D., 2000. Financial contagion. Journal of Political Economy 108, 1–33], without relying on any unexpected shock to model contagion. In this framework, contagion and financial crises are the result of information gathering by depositors, weak fundamentals and an incomplete market structure of banks. It also shows how financial systems entering a recession can affect others with apparently stronger economic conditions (contagion). Finally, this is the first paper to investigate the effectiveness of the Contingent Credit Line procedures, introduced by the IMF at the end of the nineties, as a mechanism to prevent the propagation of crises.text/plainapplication/pdfeng©ElsevierCentral BankContingent credit lineFinancial contagionFundamentalsVerification equilibriumresearch articleEmpresa10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.12.033open access2136102147Journal of Banking & Finance32