  We consider a system of diffusion processes that interact through their
empirical mean and have a stabilizing force acting on each of them,
corresponding to a bistable potential. There are three parameters that
characterize the system: the strength of the intrinsic stabilization, the
strength of the external random perturbations, and the degree of cooperation or
interaction between them. The latter is the rate of mean reversion of each
component to the empirical mean of the system. We interpret this model in the
context of systemic risk and analyze in detail the effect of cooperation
between the components, that is, the rate of mean reversion. We show that in a
certain regime of parameters increasing cooperation tends to increase the
stability of the individual agents but it also increases the overall or
systemic risk. We use the theory of large deviations of diffusions interacting
through their mean field.
