Are credit default swaps still a sideshow? How information flow between equity and CDS markets has changed since the financial crisis

We examine the information flow between equity and credit default swap (CDS) markets using firm-level returns data before and after the global financial crisis. Before the crisis, the information flow was unidirectional, with equity returns leading CDS returns. While equity returns continue to lead CDS returns after the crisis, we find that the speed of adjustment of the CDS market to equity markets has increased during this period. We also find evidence of a bidirectional flow of information between these markets, with equity returns responding to credit protection returns in the postcrisis period. The quicker response of CDS spreads to equity returns during the postcrisis period primarily occurs among entities with lower credit ratings. In contrast, the response of equity returns to lagged CDS returns during the postcrisis period is observed among firms across different credit rating categories; however, the magnitude of the response is higher among those with lower credit ratings.     

The market for credit default swaps: new insights into investors' use of accounting information?

The market for credit default swaps has developed into a well‐functioning, global multi‐trillion dollar market, wherein investors price and transfer corporate financial instruments on the basis of credit risk. This paper first summarizes the structure and growth of the market. Next, I introduce theory and evidence on how investors price credits risk and explain how the quality of financial statement information plays a unique role in the determination of credit spread. I then review the nascent empirical accounting literature on this topic. This review sheds light on several accounting research questions that might be understood better in the setting of the credit default swap market. The final section summarizes suggestions for future work.     

Financial development and innovation: Cross-country evidence

We examine how financial market development affects technological innovation. Using a large data set that includes 32 developed and emerging countries and a fixed effects identification strategy, we identify economic mechanisms through which the development of equity markets and credit markets affects technological innovation. We show that industries that are more dependent on external finance and that are more high-tech intensive exhibit a disproportionally higher innovation level in countries with better developed equity markets. However, the development of credit markets appears to discourage innovation in industries with these characteristics. Our paper provides new insights into the real effects of financial market development on the economy.     

Value investing in credit markets

We outline a parsimonious empirical model to assess the relative usefulness of accounting- and equity market-based information to explain corporate credit spreads. The primary determinant of corporate credit spreads is the physical default probability. We compare existing accounting-based and market-based models to forecast default. We then assess whether the credit market completely incorporates this default information into credit spreads. We find that credit spreads reflect information about forecasted default rates with a significant lag. This unique evidence suggests a role for value investing in credit markets.     

Good disclosure doesn't cure bad accounting—Or does it?: Evaluating the case for SFAS 158

This paper investigates whether the newly required recognition of the funded status of defined benefit (DB) plans under SFAS 158 is incrementally value relevant in its adoption year (2006) relative to the corresponding amounts which were previously disclosed from both equity investor and credit rating perspectives. In equity valuation models, we use a sample of 878 firms (1756 firm years) offering DB plans in 2005 (disclosure year) and 2006 (recognition year), and find no incrementally significant association with market prices of newly recognized amounts under SFAS 158 over the same information that was disclosed pre-SFAS 158. Our credit rating tests, using a sample of 428 DB firms (856 firm years) for 2005 and 2006 also show no differential impact of recognition over disclosure. Overall, we find that equity investors price the SFAS 158-imposed pension differential while credit rating agencies do not, regardless of whether such information is recognized or disclosed in the financial statements. Our results are consistent with efficiency in both equity and credit markets with respect to pension information and suggest that SFAS 158 has not changed the way market participants in aggregate use pension-related financial statement information.     

Market microstructure: A review from down under

The early automation of the Australian and New Zealand financial markets provided researchers with access to high‐frequency data to undertake extensive empirical market microstructure research. We use this anniversary edition of Accounting and Finance to review some of this research and to discuss the development of the Australian and New Zealand markets since their automation. We identify issues currently facing the markets and highlight potential areas for future research. The paper also provides a review of market microstructure theory on inventory control models and asymmetric information models.     

Credit Derivatives and the Default Risk of Large Complex Financial Institutions

This paper proposes and implements a multivariate model of the coevolution of the first and second moments of two broad credit default swap indices and the equity prices of sixteen large complex financial institutions. We use this empirical model to build a bank default risk model, in the vein of the classic Merton-type, which utilises a multi-equation framework to model forward-looking measures of market and credit risk using the credit default swap (CDS) index market as a measure of the conditions of the global credit environment. In the first step, we estimate the dynamic correlations and volatilities describing the evolution of the CDS indices and the banks’ equity prices and then impute the implied assets and their volatilities conditional on the evolution and volatility of equity. In the second step, we show that there is a substantial ‘asset shortfall’ and that substantial capital injections and/or asset insurance are required to restore the stability of our sample institutions to an acceptable level following large shocks to the aggregate level of credit risk in financial markets.     

中国金融周期与横向关联:时空双维度相结合视角

宏观审慎政策关注各金融子市场在时间维度上的金融周期和空间维度上的横向关联。本文结合时间维度与空间维度视角,使用股票市场、货币市场、房地产市场以及信贷市场的数据,测算2001—2019年中国金融周期和横向关联的波动特征、作用关系与频域叠加机理。研究结果表明:时间维度金融周期与空间维度横向关联的波动趋势具有一致性。我国金融周期长度约为10.33年,横向关联波动周期的长度约为10.58年。从作用关系上看,首先,我国房地产周期达到波峰后,会对股票市场和信贷市场产生较强的溢出效应。随后,股市周期达到波峰后,会向房地产市场和信贷市场产生较强的溢出效应。最后,我国信贷市场接受股票市场和房地产市场溢出后,信贷周期会逐渐达到波峰。从频域叠加机理的角度看,我国金融子市场间横向关联的波动主要由中低频波段驱动,中低频波段横向关联的持续期在2个月以上。     

Same firm,two volatilities: How variance risk is priced in credit and equity markets

Variance risk premia (VRP) based on equity and credit market information for the same firm differ substantially in magnitude. VRP is strongly dependent on firm characteristics. Higher-leveraged and larger firms have lower VRP. The smirk in the plot of VRP vs. leverage is higher for low-levered firms than for high-levered firms. This smirk is more pronounced in the credit market than in the equity market. VRP, and especially credit VRP, correlates with higher future returns and is a priced source of risk in both markets.     

Discussion of “Financial statement comparability and credit risk”

Comparability of financial statements has been a subject that is often referred to by academics and practitioners alike. In recent years, researchers have attempted to develop a quantifiable framework to study the benefits of comparability from the perspective of equity markets. Kim et al. (2013) approach this issue from the perspective of credit markets. This discussion of their paper has three objectives. First, it critiques their proxy for comparability and offers suggestions on how to validate their assumptions. Second, it recommends improvements to their research design, keeping in mind nuances of credit as an asset class. Finally, to help the authors with their future research, it offers proxies for comparability and information asymmetry that can be developed through some new datasets that have become available to researchers.     

Did the Market Signal Impending Problems at Northern Rock? An Analysis of Four Financial Instruments

The academic literature has regularly argued that market discipline can support regulatory authority mechanisms in ensuring banking sector stability. This includes, amongst other things, using forward‐looking market prices to identify those credit institutions that are most at risk of failure. The paper's key aim is to analyse whether market investors signalled potential problems at Northern Rock in advance of the bank announcing that it had negotiated emergency lending facilities at the Bank of England in September 2007. A further aim of the paper is to examine the signalling qualities of four financial market instruments (credit default swap spreads, subordinated debt spreads, implied volatility from options prices and equity measures of bank risk) so as to explore both the relative and individual qualities of each. The paper's findings, therefore, contribute to the market discipline literature on using market data to identify bank risk‐taking and enhancing supervisory monitoring. Our analysis suggests that private market participants did signal impending financial problems at Northern Rock. These findings lend some empirical support to proposals for the supervisory authorities to use market information more extensively to improve the identification of troubled banks. The paper identifies equities as providing the timeliest and clearest signals of bank condition, whilst structural factors appear to hamper the signalling qualities of subordinated debt spreads and credit default swap spreads. The paper also introduces idiosyncratic implied volatility as a potentially useful early warning metric for supervisory authorities to observe.     

货币政策公告、政策不确定性及股票市场的预公告溢价效应——来自中国市场的证据

中国人民银行周期性发布的货币政策相关公告为市场判断货币政策走向提供重要信息。较于实体经济反馈政策信息具有滞后性,股票市场是否在货币政策公告期内及时对政策消息做出反应,即存在公告效应？股票价格是否体现预期货币政策调整带来的不确定性？本文基于2011-2017年A股市场数据,研究我国股票市场在我国货币政策相关公告发布前后几日这一较短窗口区间内的市场反应。结果表明,股市指数在发布货币供应量指标的公告前几天内会出现显著为正的风险溢价,而在指标发布后溢价并不显著,这一现象我们称之为货币政策相关公告的“预公告溢价效应”。本文发现,预公告溢价的产生并非由于市场提前预期到货币政策的走向,而是来源于投资者预先获得了对政策不确定性的溢价补偿。本文进一步就防范系统性风险、从数量型货币政策工具向价格型转变等问题提出了相关政策建议。     

Capital structure with dividend restrictions

This paper develops a symmetric information model of a new firm which incorporates a constraint on dividend payments known as a balance sheet test. This test solves moral hazard problems that arise in credit markets where complete contracting over future actions is not possible. This constraint breaks down the traditional symmetric information result of separability between financial and real variables, and thus maximizing shareholder returns in this setting is not equivalent to maximizing total firm value. As a consequence, more profitable firms, those with a higher average product of capital, will have lower debt/equity ratios. Debt/equity ratios will be positively correlated with the firm's physical capital and negatively correlated with the firm's market power.     

3个月Shibor合理报价水平探析

该文通过借鉴国外成熟金融市场的类似样本数据——L．bor与国债、企业债之间的信用利差水平,来探讨我国3MShibpr的合理价格水平。虽然该经验数据在中国应用有一定的局限性,但随着市场信息的融合以及Shibor市场基础的不断完善,Shibor的报价水平必将愈趋合理。     

Transparency in Bank Risk Modeling: A Solution to the Conundrum of Bank Regulation

After financial disasters, financial risk models are often blamed for failing to provide adequate warning. The author argues that, in many cases, the models provided accurate warnings but were ignored by market participants who did not like what they said. The financial crisis of 2008–2009 was not the first time this has happened. The author describes similar but smaller debacles in 1994 and 1998 that had their roots in financial innovation that took place a decade earlier. In both cases, risk models warned that volatile securities would become impossible to hedge; but rather than exiting those positions as they should have done, some market participants simply ignored the flashing warning lights. Some current financial risk models have proven to be quite robust. Large commercial banks have mined their internal data to create empirical models of default probability that forecast accurately out of sample. Default models based on contingent claims analysis have been available for years, including some that use continuously‐traded equity and equity options prices. Hybrid models that combine empirical data‐mining and forward‐looking market‐based signals have been shown to provide reliable early warning signals about corporate credit risk. The author recommends making banks' data bases and risk models freely available to regulators, ratings agencies, and independent analysts. When provided with access to the findings of independent efforts to measure the riskiness of bank portfolios, public scrutiny and third‐party analysis would compel bank senior management to improve risk measurement and increase transparency. Banks would benefit by restoring market confidence in the quality of their books. Making risk models transparent could also help break the present impasse between regulators and financial intermediaries. It may be possible for markets to establish a standard for credit risk that is more robust and more trustworthy than the ratings‐based system that fell into disrepute after the 2008 crisis. This would be preferable to the present thrust of bank regulation, which proposes to apply the severest standards to bank ownership of risk, and threatens to dampen economic growth.     

Borrower Self-Selection,Underwriting Costs,and Subprime Mortgage Credit Supply

In the U.S., households participate in two very different types of credit markets. Personal lending is characterized by continuous risk-based pricing in which lenders offer households a continuous distribution of borrowing possibilities based on estimates of their creditworthiness. This contrasts sharply with mortgage markets where lenders specialize in specific risk categories of borrowers and mortgage supply is stepwise linear. The contrast between continuous lending for personal loans and discrete lending by specialized lenders for mortgage credit has led to concerns regarding the efficiency and equity of mortgage lending. This paper sheds both theoretical and empirical light on the differences in the two credit markets. The theory section demonstrates why, in a perfectly competitive credit market where all lenders have the same underwriting technology, mortgage credit supply curves are stepwise linear and lenders specialize in prime or subprime lending. The empirical section then provides evidence that borrowers are being effectively sorted based on risk characteristics by the market.     

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.     

金融发展影响了公司成熟度与现金股利政策的关系吗?

选取留存收益股权比反映公司成熟度,研究不同金融发展水平下,公司成熟度与现金股利的关系,实证结果显示,伴随公司成熟度的提高,公司实施积极现金股利政策的动机会显著提升;金融发展在提高公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向正向关系的同时,由于提供更多的投资机会,却弱化了公司成熟度与现金股利支付水平的正向关系。进一步研究发现,金融发展水平的提升能够推迟成熟公司首次对外支付现金股利的时机;其对公司成熟度与现金股利政策关系的影响作用主要源于金融发展的"治理效应"路径;将金融发展分为信贷市场发展和股权市场发展,发现与信贷市场促进公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向正相关关系不同,股权市场抑制了公司成熟度与现金股利支付倾向及支付水平的正相关关系。     

私人信息、公开信息与中国的金融市场参与

金融市场的发展能够为长期的经济增长提供动力,家庭对金融市场的有限参与是制约金融发展的重要因素之一。2015年中国绝大多数家庭未能参与金融市场。本文采用倾向得分匹配方法考察了私人信息和公开信息对家庭金融市场参与的影响以及两者的影响差异。基于2015年CGSS数据集的分析结果显示,家庭拥有金融市场私人信息或者能够充分获取公开信息都会显著提升其参与金融市场的概率。家庭获取公开信息的渠道越广泛,经由各种渠道获取的公开信息越多,参与金融市场的概率就越高。总体而言,充分获取公开信息比拥有私人信息对家庭金融市场参与的影响更大,这是源于个体对两种信息质量预期的不同。公开信息具有比私人信息更广泛的信息来源和更强的可验证性,这提升了家庭对公开信息质量的预期,为其提供了参与金融市场的更大激励。对中国而言,改善政策制定和执行的效率以及政策承诺的可信性有助于提升家庭对公开信息质量的预期,从而鼓励家庭参与金融市场。     

区域性股权市场服务小微企业的实践与探索

区域性股权市场作为我国多层次资本市场的重要组成部分,可以为中小微企业提供以股权融资为核心的综合金融服务,为地方政府扶持中小微企业政策提供平台,在服务地方中小微企业方面发挥着不可或缺的作用。近十年来,各区域性股权市场已在拓宽融资渠道、促进改制升级、支持科创企业发展、服务基层金融工程、协助政策实施等方面积累了丰富的实践经验。后续仍应通过政策引导和制度创新,充分发挥区域性股权市场的功能作用,畅通其与更高层次资本市场间的有机联系机制,适时启动改革创新试点,并营造良好的市场发展环境,多措并举推动区域性股权市场不断走向成熟和完善,为小微企业发展和经济转型升级做出更大贡献。