Credit Contagion Channels: Market Microstructure Evidence from Lehman Brothers’ Bankruptcy

Immediately after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, many firms disclosed their financial exposure (or lack thereof) to Lehman. This offers a clean setting to test two credit contagion channels through which a financial firm's bankruptcy can affect other firms—“counterparty risk” and “information transmission” channels. Using market microstructure variables to measure the various dimensions of contagion effects, we provide robust evidence supporting the significance of counterparty risk. Firms with exposure to Lehman suffered more severe negative effects—wider bid‐ask spread, higher price impact, greater information asymmetry, and greater selling pressure—than unexposed firms. We find mixed evidence regarding the information transmission hypothesis.     

The use of credit default swaps by bond mutual funds: Liquidity provision and counterparty risk

Corporate bond mutual funds increased their selling of credit protection in the credit default swaps (CDS) market during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This trading activity was primarily in multi-name CDS, greater among larger and established funds, and directed toward counterparty dealers in financial distress. Funds that sold credit protection during the crisis experienced greater credit market risk and superior post-crisis performance, consistent with higher expected returns from liquidity provision. Funds using Lehman Brothers as a counterparty experienced abnormal outflows and returns of –2% immediately following Lehman's bankruptcy, suggesting that funds’ opportunistic trading in CDS exposed investors to counterparty risk.     

Valuation of the Firm's Liabilities When Equity Holders Are Also Creditors

Abstract:  This paper presents a tractable structural model whereby controlling equity holders are also among the creditors of the firm. As the firm approaches distress, equity holders can drain the assets of the firm and expropriate other creditors by repaying their credit before bankruptcy. The right of the bankruptcy court to revoke such repayment protects arm's length creditors, reduces the cost of borrowing and induces equity holders to anticipate repayment of their credit. Equity holders decide repayment neither too early nor too late, so as to reduce the risk of repayment revocation by the bankruptcy court. Similar conclusions apply to the preferential repayment of bank loans personally guaranteed by equity holders. The analysis also suggests that callable bearer bonds may be more valuable to equity holders than to other creditors.     

How does credit risk affect cost management strategies? Evidence on the initiation of credit default swap and sticky cost behavior

In this paper, we examine the effect of credit defaults swaps (CDS) initiation on reference firms' cost management strategies. CDS contracts provide insurance protection for creditors, inducing a shift in bargaining power from borrowers to creditors and an excessive incidence of bankruptcy. Anticipating more intransigent creditors in debt renegotiations and higher bankruptcy risk, CDS firms are incentivized to mitigate risk through decreasing cost stickiness after CDS initiation, as cost stickiness lowers liquidity and triggers early covenant violations. We find that, on average, CDS initiation is associated with a decline in reference firms' cost stickiness. This association is more pronounced for less liquid, financially distressed, and lower credit quality firms. We also find that CDS firms with a reduction in cost stickiness will exhibit lower future bankruptcy risk than CDS firms without such as reduction in stickiness. Collectively, our findings suggest that the CDS-induced “empty creditor problem” causes reference firms to undertake more conservative cost management practices to alleviate downside risk.     

基于SWN-SEIRS模型的供应链金融信用风险传染测度研究

针对供应链金融信用风险传染问题,采用SWN-SEIRS模型进行仿真模拟分析.研究发现:SWN-SEIRS模型可以有效描述供应链金融信用风险传染路径与过程;网络规模扩大增加了信用风险传染的速度,增大了信用风险扩散范围;核心企业数量的上升虽然加快了信用风险传染的速度,但有效控制了信用风险扩散范围.这为供应链金融风险传染问题的研究方法开拓了新的思路,并为金融风险防范提供了决策依据.     

Neglected Risk in Financial Innovation: Evidence from Structured Product Counterparty Exposure

We investigate the compensation of counterparty exposure in the prices of structured products. Our analysis reveals that product issuers did not compensate retail investors for counterparty exposure before the Lehman default. Post-Lehman, retail prices have no longer neglected this risk. We also measure retail investor attention towards issuer credit risk. For a given level of issuer credit risk, counterparty exposure is compensated more when attention is higher. Furthermore, issuers tend to construct products with larger counterparty exposure. Overall, our results shed light on the conditions under which financial engineering generates neglected risk.     

Counterparty credit risk and the credit default swap market

Counterparty credit risk has become one of the highest-profile risks facing participants in the financial markets. Despite this, relatively little is known about how counterparty credit risk is actually priced. We examine this issue using an extensive proprietary data set of contemporaneous CDS transaction prices and quotes by 14 different CDS dealers selling credit protection on the same underlying firm. This unique cross-sectional data set allows us to identify directly how dealers' credit risk affects the prices of these controversial credit derivatives. We find that counterparty credit risk is priced in the CDS market. The magnitude of the effect, however, is vanishingly small and is consistent with a market structure in which participants require collateralization of swap liabilities by counterparties.     

基于房地产市场的我国系统性金融风险测度与预警研究

本文阐释了基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险形成机制,据此建立了分阶段、跨部门的房地产市场的系统性金融风险网络模型,并运用2006-2017年16家上市银行数据,分析和测度了我国房价大幅下跌所引发的系统性金融风险水平和结构,构建了基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险预警指标并进行测算。研究发现:在房价下跌30%的压力情景下,我国金融体系的潜在总损失总体呈级数式上升,年均增长22.70%;基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险值(SR)呈现先上升后波动下降的总体趋势;系统性金融风险(SR)的脆弱性指标(FLI)整体呈现波浪式振荡变化,且与房地产贷款/权益整体呈反向变动,系统性金融风险(SR)的传染性指标(CTI)在2012-2017年呈持续下降趋势,且与金融市场压力指数、金融机构间资产占总资产比重呈现出高度的一致性变化趋势。最后,基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险预警指标(SRWI)值呈收敛式振荡走势,表明基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险总体可控且呈收敛式下降。     

Credit risk dynamics in response to changes in the federal funds target: The implication for firm short-term debt

The recent credit crisis has raised a number of interesting questions regarding the role of the Federal Reserve Bank and the effectiveness of its expected and unexpected interventions in financial markets, especially during the crisis, given its mandate. This paper reviews and evaluates the impact of expected and unexpected changes in the federal funds rate target on credit risk premia. The paper's main innovation is the use of an ACH-VAR (autoregressive conditional hazard VAR) model to generate the Fed's expected and unexpected monetary policy shocks which are then used to determine the effects of a Federal Reserve policy change on counterparty credit risk and more importantly short-term firm debt financing. The findings answer a longstanding question sought by researchers on the effect of policy makers' announcements on firm debt financing. The results clearly show that the Federal Reserve influences short-term debt financing through the credit channel for both expansionary and contractionary monetary policies. In particular, we find that the growth in counterparty risk appears less responsive to anticipated responses in the Fed funds rate that fail to materialize than to an unanticipated increase in the federal funds rate. Finally, we also document that the results appear to validate the Feds interventions in financial markets to stem counterparty risk and to make liquidity more readily available to firms.     

Distressed Debt Restructuring in the Presence of Credit Default Swaps

The availability of credit insurance via credit default swaps has been closely associated with the emergence of empty creditors. We empirically investigate this issue by looking at the debt restructurings (distressed exchanges and bankruptcy filings) of rated, nonfinancial U.S. companies over the period January 2007–June 2011. Using different proxies for the existence of insured creditors, we do not find evidence that the access to credit insurance favors bankruptcy over a debt workout. However, we document higher recovery prices following a distressed exchange in firms where empty creditors are more likely to emerge.     

Contagion models a la carte: which one to choose?

We propose a copula contagion mixture model for correlated default times. The model includes the well-known factor, copula, and contagion models as its special cases. The key advantage of such a model is that we can study the interaction of different models and their pricing impact. Specifically, we model the default times of the underlying names in a reference portfolio to follow contagion intensity processes with exponential decay coupled with a copula dependence structure. We also model the default time of the counterparty and its dependence structure with the reference portfolio. Numerical tests show that correlation and contagion have an enormous joint impact on the rates of CDO tranches and the corresponding credit value adjustments are extremely high to compensate for the wrong-way risk.     

基于房地产市场的我国系统性金融风险测度与预警研究

本文阐释了基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险形成机制,据此建立了分阶段、跨部门的房地产市场的系统性金融风险网络模型,并运用2006-2017年16家上市银行数据,分析和测度了我国房价大幅下跌所引发的系统性金融风险水平和结构,构建了基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险预警指标并进行测算。研究发现:在房价下跌30%的压力情景下,我国金融体系的潜在总损失总体呈级数式上升,年均增长22.70%;基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险值(SR)呈现先上升后波动下降的总体趋势;系统性金融风险(SR)的脆弱性指标(FLI)整体呈现波浪式振荡变化,且与房地产贷款/权益整体呈反向变动,系统性金融风险(SR)的传染性指标(CTI)在2012-2017年呈持续下降趋势,且与金融市场压力指数、金融机构间资产占总资产比重呈现出高度的一致性变化趋势。最后,基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险预警指标(SRWI)值呈收敛式振荡走势,表明基于房地产市场的系统性金融风险总体可控且呈收敛式下降。     

Stiffing the creditor: Asset verifiability and bankruptcy

Evidence suggests that asset pledgeability, debt complexity, and control rights of dispersed debt influence financial distress resolution. We model how courts’ imperfect verifiability of assets and valuable control of misaligned creditors shape firms’ debt structure and create coordination problems that determine distress outcomes and financing. A key result is that an increase in verifiability allows financially constrained firms to fund projects by pledging more assets to misaligned creditors, making contract renegotiation in distress times more difficult and increasing the probability of bankruptcy. Since equity receives less in the event of distress, constrained firms choose riskier projects with higher returns. Consistent with our model, bankruptcy filings increase after the U.S. Supreme Court decision imposing a “market test” to assess the value of stockholders’ interest in debtor proposals. The effect is stronger for firms with low asset verifiability. These firms also experienced an increase in recovery rates, debt capacity, and risk-taking. Our findings suggest that reforms improving the verifiability of assets substantially impact credit access. However, our results also point out that improving asset verifiability may be insufficient for constrained firms with aligned creditors. Therefore, complementary reforms that facilitate firms’ access to creditors from different market segments may be necessary.     

The mechanism of credit risk contagion among internet P2P lending platforms based on a SEIR model with time-lag

The credit risk contagion of Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms is an important part of Internet financial risk management and supervision. This study analyzes the contagion path of credit risk in Internet P2P lending. Based on complex network theory and the theory of infectious disease dynamics, the characteristics of Internet P2P lending development are combined to construct a SEIR model of credit risk transmission among Internet P2P lending platforms with time lag, and the robustness of the model is analyzed and proven. The influence of platform correlations, the susceptible immune rate, the platform elimination rate, contagion latency, the saturation coefficient, and the susceptibility input rate on credit risk contagion behavior among Internet P2P lending platforms is analyzed, using the equilibrium point and threshold value. The impact of each variable is analyzed by simulation. Corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed to prevent and control credit risk contagion among these platforms.     

Stressed,Not Frozen: The Federal Funds Market in the Financial Crisis

We examine the importance of liquidity hoarding and counterparty risk in the U.S. overnight interbank market during the financial crisis of 2008. Our findings suggest that counterparty risk plays a larger role than does liquidity hoarding: the day after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, loan terms become more sensitive to borrower characteristics. In particular, poorly performing large banks see an increase in spreads of 25 basis points, but are borrowing 1% less, on average. Worse performing banks do not hoard liquidity. While the interbank market does not freeze entirely, it does not seem to expand to meet latent demand.     

The Chrysler effect: The impact of government intervention on borrowing costs

This paper studies intercreditor conflict arising from political interference in the bankruptcy process. The U.S. government’s intervention in the 2009 reorganizations of Chrysler and GM purportedly elevated claims of the auto union over those of the automakers’ senior creditors in violation of bankruptcy priority rules. Critics predicted that businesses would experience an increase in their borrowing costs because of the risk that politically-powerful junior claimants might now leap-frog other creditors. We examine the financial market where this effect would be most detectible, the market for bonds of highly unionized companies. We find no evidence that bondholders of unionized firms reacted negatively to the government intervention and reject the claim that investors viewed the reorganizations as establishing a precedent for priority jumping by organized labor.     

Counterparty Risk and the Pricing of Defaultable Securities

Motivated by recent financial crises in East Asia and the United States where the downfall of a small number of firms had an economy-wide impact, this paper generalizes existing reduced-form models to include default intensities dependent on the default of a counterparty. In this model, firms have correlated defaults due not only to an exposure to common risk factors, but also to firm-specific risks that are termed "counterparty risks." Numerical examples illustrate the effect of counterparty risk on the pricing of defaultable bonds and credit derivatives such as default swaps.     

Do liquidity or credit effects explain the behavior of the BKBM–LIBOR differential?

This paper examines the evolution of the relationship between the onshore and offshore benchmarks for New Zealand dollar funding during the global financial crisis. In August 2007 the BKBM–LIBOR differential switched from positive to negative and then widened considerably following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, before narrowing gradually as the turmoil in financial markets subsided. Our structural regression model and decomposition analyses show that changes in liquidity, proxied by bid/ask spreads, largely explain the changes in the BKBM–LIBOR differential over this period and that credit risk factors only played a minor role. However our analysis also shows that bid/ask spreads in the offshore market price information regarding counterparty credit risk, suggesting that our initial results could understate the role played by credit risk factors.     

Margin practices and requirements during the National Banking Era: An early example of macro‐prudential regulation

The New York stock market was plagued by a series of financial crises during the National Banking Era, culminating in the Panic of 1907. The traditional view holds that the crises were rooted in structural flaws related to trade settlement as well as excessive and indiscriminate margin lending that remained unaddressed until the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank. An examination of the historical record, however, shows that brokers sought to control contagion and spillover effects through reform of the settlement process and by modulating margin lending rates and maintenance requirements according to macroeconomic conditions, counterparty credit‐worthiness and market volatility. Using newly gathered archival data, we show that the New York Stock Exchange enacted macro‐prudential regulations that may have reduced the severity of crises during this period. By providing early evidence of private sector responses to rising systemic risk, the paper addresses an important aspect of early market microstructure.     

Resaleable debt and systemic risk

Many debt claims, such as bonds, are resaleable; others, such as repos, are not. There was a fivefold increase in repo borrowing before the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Why? Did banks’ dependence on non-resaleable debt precipitate the crisis? In this paper, we develop a model of bank lending with credit frictions. The key feature of the model is that debt claims are heterogenous in their resaleability. We find that decreasing credit market frictions leads to an increase in borrowing via non-resaleable debt. Such borrowing has a dark side: It causes credit chains to form, because, if a bank makes a loan via non-resaleable debt and needs liquidity, it cannot sell the loan but must borrow via a new contract. These credit chains are a source of systemic risk, as one bank’s default harms not only its creditors but also its creditors’ creditors. Overall, our model suggests that reducing credit market frictions may have an adverse effect on the financial system and even lead to the failures of financial institutions.