The Alaali Systemic Risk Index (ASRI): A Vulnerability–Stress–Transmission Architecture

Abstract

Existing systemic-risk measures capture important dimensions of market loss, institutional spillovers, financial-sector vulnerability, financial stress, and interconnectedness. However, the literature reviewed in this study does not reveal a widely established framework that explicitly organizes corporate financial fragility, stress activation and conditioning, and transmission exposure within a common systemic-risk architecture. This study employed an integrative literature review and conceptual-theoretical synthesis covering systemic risk, corporate financial fragility, financial and systemic stress, macro-financial vulnerability, transmission mechanisms, and early-warning approaches. The synthesis produced the Alaali Systemic Risk Index (ASRI) conceptual framework. ASRI distinguishes Corporate Financial Fragility as underlying vulnerability, Financial-Market Stress as activation and amplification, Macro-Financial Instability as the conditioning environment, and Transmission Exposure as propagation capacity. Its central theoretical logic is that corporate vulnerability becomes systemically consequential when stress activates it and it transmits through economically significant channels. ASRI is a conceptual rather than calibrated or predictive instrument. Its contribution is the vulnerability–stress–transmission–outcome architecture, which provides a basis for future operationalization, country-sensitive calibration, model specification, and empirical validation.