Do sovereign credit default swaps represent a clean measure of sovereign default risk? A factor model approach

In this study, we use a factor model in order to decompose sovereign Credit Default Swaps (CDS) spreads into default, liquidity, systematic liquidity and correlation components. By calibrating the model to sovereign CDSs and bonds we are able to present a better decomposition and a more accurate measure of spread components. Our analysis reveals that sovereign CDS spreads are highly driven by liquidity (55.6% of default risk and 44.32% of liquidity) and that sovereign bond spreads are less subject to liquidity frictions and therefore could represent a better proxy for sovereign default risk (73% of default risk and 26.86% of liquidity). Furthermore, our model enables us to directly study the effect of systematic liquidity and flight-to-liquidity risks on bond and CDS spreads through the factor sensitivity matrix. We find that these risks do have an influence on the default intensity and they contribute significantly to spread movements. Finally, our empirical results advance the idea that the increase in the CDS spreads observed during the crisis period was mainly due to a surge in liquidity rather than to an increase in the default intensity.     

Sovereign CDS Spreads,Volatility, and Liquidity: Evidence from 2010 German Short Sale Ban

The paper examines global impact of 2010 German short sale ban on sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, volatility, and liquidity across 54 countries. We find that CDS spreads continue rising after the ban in the debt crisis region, which suggests that the short selling ban is incapable of suppressing soaring borrowing costs in these countries. However, we find that the ban helps stabilize the CDS market by reducing CDS volatility. The reduction in CDS volatility is greater in the eurozone than that in the non‐eurozone. Furthermore, we find that the CDS market liquidity has been impaired during the ban for the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) countries. In contrast, there are no dramatic changes in the market liquidity for non‐PIIGS eurozone and non‐eurozone samples. The findings suggest that the short sale ban is ineffective to reduce sovereign borrowing costs in the debt crisis region if the underlying economy has not been significantly improved.     

Credit default swaps and the market for sovereign debt

In this paper, we analyze the determinants and effects of credit default swap (CDS) trading initiation in the sovereign bond market. CDS trading initiation is associated with a 30–150 basis point reduction in sovereign bond yields, with greater yield reductions accruing to higher default risk economies. For countries with high default risk, rated B or lower by Standard and Poor’s, CDS initiation is also associated with significant price efficiency benefits in the underlying market. CDS trading initiation is more likely following increases in local equity index volatility, index spreads for regional and global CDS markets, or depreciation of the local currency relative to the US dollar, and decreases in a country’s ability to service foreign debt. Our results are robust to selection bias controls based on these factors.     

Market conditions,default risk and credit spreads

This study empirically examines the impact of the interaction between market and default risk on corporate credit spreads. Using credit default swap (CDS) spreads, we find that average credit spreads decrease in GDP growth rate, but increase in GDP growth volatility and jump risk in the equity market. At the market level, investor sentiment is the most important determinant of credit spreads. At the firm level, credit spreads generally rise with cash flow volatility and beta, with the effect of cash flow beta varying with market conditions. We identify implied volatility as the most significant determinant of default risk among firm-level characteristics. Overall, a major portion of individual credit spreads is accounted for by firm-level determinants of default risk, while macroeconomic variables are directly responsible for a lesser portion.     

Credit spread interdependencies of European states and banks during the financial crisis

We investigate the interdependence of the default risk of several Eurozone countries (France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) and their domestic banks during the period between June 2007 and May 2010, using daily credit default swaps (CDS). Bank bailout programs changed the composition of both banks’ and sovereign balance sheets and, moreover, affected the linkage between the default risk of governments and their local banks. Our main findings suggest that in the period before bank bailouts the contagion disperses from bank credit spreads into the sovereign CDS market. After bailouts, a financial sector shock affects sovereign CDS spreads more strongly in the short run. However, the impact becomes insignificant in the long term. Furthermore, government CDS spreads become an important determinant of banks’ CDS series. The interdependence of government and bank credit risk is heterogeneous across countries, but homogeneous within the same country.     

The impact of distressed economies on the EU sovereign market

Financially distressed economies inside the European Union (EU) are being blamed for producing a general increase in borrowing costs. This article analyzes the channels of default risk transmission within the EU countries using the information content in the sovereign Credit Default Swap (CDS) market. We proceed in two directions. First, we test the existence of cross-border volatility effects between the central and the peripheral EU countries. Second, we explore the effect of distressed economies on the default and risk premium constituents of sovereign default swaps. We show a significant volatility spillover from distressed to central European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) economies. This causality pattern leads to a significant impact on the default swap risk premia. On average, the risk premium accounts for approximately 42% of central EMU spreads and 56% of the spreads for those countries outside of the EMU. The peripheral risk also affects the default component of central economies, although its impact is lower.     

The information content of CDS implied volatility and associated trading strategies

Using the theoretical link between put options and credit default swaps (CDS) in a very general setting, we develop a robust measure of CDS implied volatility (CIV) that captures the information content of CDS markets. Specifically, we use the unit recovery claim to bridge CDS and deep out-of-the-money put options of the same firm and then back out CIV via the binomial tree. Our CIV measure strongly co-moves with the option implied volatility (OIV), with a correlation coefficient of 0.8. Based on the standardized difference between CIV and OIV, we construct CDS and option trading strategies. Without taking transaction costs into account, the long–short CDS trading strategy achieves an annualized return of 58.29% and a Sharpe ratio of 2.97, which cannot be explained by non-parametric skewness and volatility risk.     

The information content of option-implied volatility for credit default swap valuation

Credit default swaps (CDS) are similar to out-of-the-money put options in that both offer a low cost and effective protection against downside risk. This study investigates whether put option-implied volatility is an important determinant of CDS spreads. Using a large sample of firms with both CDS and options data, we find that individual firms’ put option-implied volatility dominates historical volatility in explaining the time-series variation in CDS spreads. To understand this result, we show that implied volatility is a more efficient forecast for future realized volatility than historical volatility. More importantly, the volatility risk premium embedded in option prices covaries with the CDS spread. These findings complement existing empirical evidence based on market-level data.     

Credit default swap spreads and variance risk premia

We find that the firm-level variance risk premium has a prominent explanatory power for credit spreads in the presence of market- and firm-level control variables established in the existing literature. Such predictability complements that of the leading state variable—the leverage ratio—and strengthens significantly with a lower firm credit rating, longer credit contract maturity, and model-free implied variance. We provide further evidence that (1) the variance risk premium has a cleaner systematic component than implied variance or expected variance, (2) the cross-section of firms’ variance risk premia capture systematic variance risk in a stronger way than firms’ equity returns in capturing market return risk, and (3) a structural model with stochastic volatility can reproduce the predictability pattern of variance risk premia for credit spreads.     

The delivery option in credit default swaps

Under standard assumptions the reduced-form credit risk model is not capable of accurately pricing the two fundamental credit risk instruments – bonds and credit default swaps (CDS) – simultaneously. Using a data set of euro-denominated corporate bonds and CDS our paper quantifies this mispricing by calibrating such a model to bond data, and subsequently using it to price CDS, resulting in model CDS spreads up to 50% lower on average than observed in the market. An extended model is presented which includes the delivery option implicit in CDS contracts emerging since a basket of bonds is deliverable in default. By using a constant recovery rate standard models assume equal recoveries for all bonds and hence zero value for the delivery option. Contradicting this common assumption, case studies of Chapter 11 filings presented in the paper show that corporate bonds do not necessarily trade at equal levels following default. Our extension models the implied expected recovery rate of the cheapest-to-deliver bond and, applied to data, largely eliminates the mispricing. Calibrated recovery values lie between 8% and 47% for different obligors, exhibiting strong variation among rating classes and industries. A cross-sectional analysis reveals that the implied recovery parameter depends on proxies for the delivery option, primarily the number of available bonds and bond pricing errors. No evidence is found for a direct influence of the bid-ask spread, notional amount, coupon, or rating used as proxies for bond market liquidity.     

Does the European Financial Stability Facility Bail Out Sovereigns or Banks? An Event Study

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank credit default swap (CDS) spreads, and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private beneficiaries were bank creditors. Furthermore, countries with banking systems heavily exposed to southern Europe and Ireland benefited, as evidenced by lower sovereign CDS spreads. The combined gains of bank debt holders and shareholders exceed the increase in the value of their banks’ sovereign debt exposures, suggesting that banks saw their contingent claim on the financial safety net increase in value.     

Regime dependent determinants of credit default swap spreads

Credit default swap (CDS) spreads display pronounced regime specific behaviour. A Markov switching model of the determinants of changes in the iTraxx Europe indices demonstrates that they are extremely sensitive to stock volatility during periods of CDS market turbulence. But in ordinary market circumstances CDS spreads are more sensitive to stock returns than they are to stock volatility. Equity hedge ratios are three or four times larger during the turbulent period, which explains why previous research on single-regime models finds stock positions to be ineffective hedges for default swaps. Interest rate movements do not affect the financial sector iTraxx indices and they only have a significant effect on the other indices when the spreads are not excessively volatile. Raising interest rates may decrease the probability of credit spreads entering a volatile period.     

Redenomination Risk

Euro redenomination risk is the risk that a euro asset is redenominated into a devalued legacy currency. We propose a time‐varying, country‐specific intra‐euro area redenomination risk measure, defined as the quanto credit default swaps (CDS) of a member country relative to the quanto CDS of a benchmark member country. Focusing on Italy, Spain, and France and using Germany as benchmark, we show that the redenomination risk shocks significantly affect sovereign yield spreads, with Italy and Spain being most adversely affected. Finally, foreign redenomination risk shocks spill over and above local redenomination risk shocks, suggesting that this risk is systemic.     

A jump to default extended CEV model: an application of Bessel processes

We develop a flexible and analytically tractable framework which unifies the valuation of corporate liabilities, credit derivatives, and equity derivatives. We assume that the stock price follows a diffusion, punctuated by a possible jump to zero (default). To capture the positive link between default and equity volatility, we assume that the hazard rate of default is an increasing affine function of the instantaneous variance of returns on the underlying stock. To capture the negative link between volatility and stock price, we assume a constant elasticity of variance (CEV) specification for the instantaneous stock volatility prior to default. We show that deterministic changes of time and scale reduce our stock price process to a standard Bessel process with killing. This reduction permits the development of completely explicit closed form solutions for risk-neutral survival probabilities, CDS spreads, corporate bond values, and European-style equity options. Furthermore, our valuation model is sufficiently flexible so that it can be calibrated to exactly match arbitrarily given term structures of CDS spreads, interest rates, dividend yields, and at-the-money implied volatilities.     

Crash risk of the euro in the sovereign debt crisis of 2009–2010

The economic-political instability of a country, which is tied to its credit risk, often leads to sharp depreciation and heightened volatility in its currency. This paper shows that not only the creditworthiness of the euro-area countries with weaker fiscal positions but also that of the member countries with more sound fiscal positions are important determinants of the deep out-of-the-money euro put option prices, which embedded information on the euro crash risk during the sovereign debt crisis of 2009–2010. We also find evidence of information flow from the sovereign credit default swap market to the currency option market during the crisis.     

Daily pricing of emerging market sovereign CDS before and during the global financial crisis

In this paper, we study the determinants of daily spreads for emerging market sovereign credit default swaps (CDSs) over the period April 2002–December 2011. Using GARCH models, we find, first, that daily CDS spreads for emerging market sovereigns are more related to global and regional risk premia than to country-specific risk factors. This result is particularly evident during the second subsample (August 2007–December 2011), where neither macroeconomic variables nor country ratings significantly explain CDS spread changes. Second, measures of US bond, equity, and CDX High Yield returns, as well as emerging market credit returns, are the most dominant drivers of CDS spread changes. Finally, our analysis suggests that CDS spreads are more strongly influenced by international spillover effects during periods of market stress than during normal times.     

Cross-hedging strategies between CDS spreads and option volatility during crises

This paper presents a joint analysis of the term structure of credit default swap (CDS) spreads and the implied volatility surface for five European countries from 2007 to 2012, a sample period covering both the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the European debt crisis. We analyze to which extent effective cross-hedges can be performed between the credit and equity derivatives markets during these two crises. We find that during a global crisis a breakdown of the relationship between credit risk and equity volatility may occur, jeopardizing any cross-hedging strategy, which happened during the GFC. This stands in sharp contrast to the more localized European debt crisis, during which this fundamental relationship was preserved despite turbulent market conditions for both the CDS and volatility markets.     

Price discovery of credit spreads in tranquil and crisis periods

In this paper we investigate the price discovery process in single-name credit spreads obtained from bond, credit default swap (CDS), equity and equity option prices. We analyse short term price discovery by modelling daily changes in credit spreads in the four markets with a vector autoregressive model (VAR). We also look at price discovery in the long run with a vector error correction model (VECM). We find that in the short term the option market clearly leads the other markets in the sub-prime crisis (2007–2009). During the less severe sovereign debt crisis (2009–2012) and the pre-crisis period, options are still important but CDSs become more prominent. In the long run, deviations from the equilibrium relationship with the option market still lead to adjustments in the credit spreads observed or implied from other markets. However, options no longer dominate price discovery in any of the periods considered. Our findings have implications for traders, credit risk managers and financial regulators.     

Analyzing determinants of bond yield spreads with Bayesian Model Averaging

This paper analyzes determinants of country default risk in emerging markets, reflected by sovereign yield spreads. The results reported so far in the literature are heterogeneous with respect to significant explanatory variables. This could indicate a high degree of uncertainty about the “true” regression model. We use Bayesian Model Averaging as the model selection method in order to find the variables which are most likely to determine credit risk. We document that total debt, history of recent default, currency depreciation, and growth rate of foreign currency reserves as well as market sentiments are the key drivers of yield spreads.     

The Drivers of Sovereign CDS Spread Changes: Local Versus Global Factors

We use daily data for a panel of 34 countries to investigate regional differences in sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) spread determinants and the significance of local versus global market factors. Similar to prior studies, we find a high level of commonality among CDS spreads, but our results show that this effect is stronger in Latin American CDS. The results of our quantile panel regression model show that although global forces drive spreads across the conditional distribution, changes in credit ratings are significant in explaining CDS spreads only in the upper quantiles. We also confirm the existence of regional differences in spread determinants.