主权信用违约互换的运作及启示

欧洲各国主权债务危机的频发,使得主权CDS在全球范围内备受瞩目。本文分析了主权CDS的市场发展状况、运作及定价机制;考察欧洲主权债务危机中主权CDS的行为;提出对我国地方政府债务问题的启示。研究发现:(1)主权CDS息差变化受到了欧元区因素、本国因素、投机和代理对冲的影响;(2)短期主权CDS供不应求;(3)禁止主权CDS的裸卖空交易存在不合理性;(4)西欧主权风险外溢使得东欧及新兴市场国家的主权CDS市场波动加剧。     

欧洲主权债务危机演进及对中资银行的启示

受全球金融危机的持续影响和欧元区制度问题的激化,欧洲主权债务危机呈愈演愈烈之势,逐步从边缘国家扩散至核心国家,并从主权债务危机向银行业危机演化。目前,欧元区重债国采取的财务整顿政策难以在短期发挥缩减赤字的作用,反而加大复苏风险;对重债国援助资金总量有限,其发放门槛徒增短期违约风险;欧洲央行购买国债虽有利于缓解危机恶化,但量化宽松的政策与其控制通胀的设立宗旨存在矛盾。在此背景下,中资银行应调整涉欧资产配置,进一步加强国别风险研究和管理,积极稳健地推进国际化经营,打造资产、业务和经营地域多元化的国际化银行。     

Sovereign credit rating determinants: A comparison before and after the European debt crisis

This paper compares the importance of different sovereign credit rating determinants over time, using a sample of 90 countries for the years 2002–2015. Applying the composite marginal likelihood approach, we estimate a multi-year ordered probit model for each of the three major credit rating agencies. After the start of the European debt crisis in 2009, the importance of the financial balance, the economic development and the external debt increased substantially and the effect of eurozone membership switched from positive to negative. In addition, GDP growth gained a lot of importance for highly indebted sovereigns and government debt became much more important for countries with a low GDP growth rate. These findings provide empirical evidence that the credit rating agencies changed their sovereign credit rating assessment after the start of the European debt crisis.     

欧洲主权债务危机的根源与出路

欧洲主权债务危机是主权问题与银行问题相互作用的结果,其根源在于欧洲银行体系和政治结构的特殊性。要化解主权债务危机需要实现财政政策的一体化和银行监管的一体化,同时进一步推动欧盟和欧元区改革。     

Transmission of the financial and sovereign debt crises to the EMU: Stock prices,CDS spreads and exchange rates

This paper tests for the transmission of the 2007–2010 financial and sovereign debt crises to fifteen EMU countries. We use daily data from 2003 to 2010 on country financial and non-financial stock market indexes to analyze the stock market returns for three country groups within EMU: North, South and Small. The following results hold for both the North and South European countries, while the smallest countries seem to be relatively isolated from international events. First, we find strong evidence of crisis transmission to European non-financials from US non-financials, but not for financials. Second, in order to test how the sovereign debt crisis affects stock market developments we split the crisis in pre- and post-Lehman sub periods. Results show that financials become significantly more dependent on changes in the difference between the Greek and German CDS spreads after Lehman’s collapse, compared to the pre-Lehman sub period. However, this increase is much smaller for non-financials. Third, before the crisis euro appreciations coincide with European stock market decreases, whereas this relationship reverses during the crisis. Finally, this reversal seems to be triggered by Lehman’s collapse.     

希腊主权债务危机的成因与影响

日益严重的希腊主权债务危机将希腊推向了欧元区主权债务问题的风口浪尖，由此也形成了影响欧元区稳定运行的严峻挑战。该文基于国际金融危机对希腊经济与财政运行状况的影响，分析了引起希腊主权债务危机的成因及解决途径，指出解决希腊主权债务危机除了希腊自身的努力外，依然需要国际社会尤其是欧盟的援助。从全球的角度看，其他经济体的主权债务问题也同样值得警惕和重视。     

Investor induced contagion during the banking and European sovereign debt crisis of 2007–2012: Wealth effect or portfolio rebalancing?

This study investigates the way a crisis spreads within a country and across borders by testing the investor induced contagion hypothesis through the liquidity channel on stock-bond relationships of the US and five European countries before and during the global banking and European sovereign debt crisis of 2007–2012. We provide evidence consistent with the wealth effect as a source of contagion for the majority of countries. Nevertheless, we uncover evidence of investor induced contagion sourced by the portfolio rebalancing effect for correlations involving Spanish and Italian bonds during the debt crisis. Further, we find that tight (narrow) credit spreads reduce (magnify) the wealth and portfolio rebalancing effects, which are offset by the opposite effects of risk aversion amongst investors, a dynamic that is not restricted to crisis periods.     

Does sovereign risk matter? New evidence from eurozone corporate bond ratings and zero-volatility spreads

In this paper, we empirically examine if sovereign risk matters for corporate bonds in developed economies. Using a unique panel data sample of 897 corporate bonds from eleven countries within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), we investigate sovereign and corporate ratings as well as zero-volatility spreads (z-spreads). In the time period from March 2006 to June 2012, we find sovereign risk to be a significant driver of corporate risk. The effect is stronger for companies with domestic revenue structure, for companies that are (partly) owned by the government, and companies active in the utility and transportation sector. Interestingly, the impact of sovereign risk on corporate risk during the acute European sovereign debt crisis period decreases if ratings are examined, but increases if z-spreads are utilized. Rating agencies seem to take a more differentiated view on individual company risk during the sovereign debt crisis, while institutional investors might want to reduce their exposure to a country in financial distress as a whole, regardless of whether sovereign or corporate bonds are held.     

The impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on banks stocks. Some evidence of shift contagion in Europe

This paper analyzes the influence of the recent European sovereign debt crisis on banks’ equity returns for 15 countries. Our data span the period December 14th 2007 - March 8th 2013 that encompasses several episodes of economic and financial turmoil since the collapse of the subprime credit market. Our contribution to the literature is twofold. First, we use an explicit multifactor model of equity returns extended with a sovereign risk factor. Second, we adopt a Smooth Transition Regression (STR) framework that allows for an endogenous definition of crisis periods and captures the changes in parameters associated with shift contagion. We find that the negative impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on banks’ equity returns has been mostly confined to European banks, whereas U.S. banks appear to be unharmed by its direct impact and may even have benefited from it. Besides, we find some evidence of shift contagion across Europe.     

Insurance companies’ trading behaviour during the European sovereign debt crisis: Flight home or flight to quality?

This paper empirically investigates if insurers exhibited a flight home or flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis and other stages of the financial crisis. Our dataset consists of over sixty insurance companies, for which we separately observe trading behaviour and portfolio revaluations at a quarterly frequency during 2006–2013. When explaining insurers’ trading behaviour we explicitly control for country risk and momentum strategies. The results show that insurers exhibited a flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis, while we find no evidence of a flight home. The flight to quality was not present before the European sovereign debt crisis and disappeared after ECB chairman Draghi's speech mid-2012. Interestingly, supervisory data suggests that the observed flight to quality was not driven by regulatory solvency constraints.     

What is the risk of European sovereign debt defaults? Fiscal space,CDS spreads and market pricing of risk

We estimate the pricing of sovereign risk for fifty countries based on fiscal space (debt/tax; deficits/tax) and other economic fundamentals over 2005–10. We focus in particular on five countries in the South-West Eurozone Periphery, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Dynamic panel estimates show that fiscal space and other macroeconomic factors are statistically and economically important determinants of sovereign risk. However, risk-pricing of the Eurozone Periphery countries is not predicted accurately either in-sample or out-of-sample: unpredicted high spreads are evident during global crisis period, especially in 2010 when the sovereign debt crisis swept over the periphery area. We match the periphery group with five middle income countries outside Europe that were closest in terms of fiscal space during the European fiscal crisis. Eurozone Periphery default risk is priced much higher than the matched countries in 2010, even allowing for differences in fundamentals. One interpretation is that these economies switched to a “pessimistic” self-fulfilling expectational equilibrium. An alternative interpretation is that the market prices not on current but future fundamentals, expecting adjustment challenges in the Eurozone periphery to be more difficult for than the matched group of middle-income countries because of exchange rate and monetary constraints.     

主权CDS对欧元区主权债务危机的影响

本文概括了主权CDS是否影响欧元区主权债务危机的几种观点和研究,发现了其中的不足之处,并试图进行弥补。文章基于面板数据,在对样本区间和国家进行分组的基础上,用向量误差修正模型(VECM)检验了主权CDS息差与国债息差的价格发现过程,此外还用向量自回归(VAR)模型分析了各国主权CDS息差之间的传染效应。结果发现,虽然主权CDS在价格发现过程中占据领先地位,但是没有证据表明主权CDS与主权债务危机之间存在必然的联系,而各国债务危机之间确实存在传染效应。     

Domestic Banks As Lightning Rods? Home Bias and Information during the Eurozone Crisis

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during the recent Eurozone crisis, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level data set covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I first reconfirm that the crisis led to the reallocation of sovereign debt from foreign to domestic banks. In contrast to the recent literature focusing only on sovereign debt, I show that the banks' private-sector exposures were (at least) equally affected by the rise in home bias. Consistent with this pattern, I propose a new debt reallocation channel based on informational frictions and show that the informationally closer foreign banks increase their relative exposures when the sovereign risk rises. The effect of informational closeness is economically meaningful and robust to the use of different information measures and controls for alternative channels of sovereign debt reallocation.     

A comprehensive approach to measuring the relation between systemic risk exposure and sovereign debt

Using an integrated model to control for simultaneity, as well as new risk measurement techniques such as Adapted Exposure CoVaR and Marginal Expected Shortfall (MES), we show that the aggregate systemic risk exposure of financial institutions is positively related to sovereign debt yields in European countries in an episodic manner, varying positively with the intensity of the financial crisis facing a particular nation. We find evidence of a simultaneous relation between systemic risk exposure and sovereign debt yields. This suggests that models of sovereign debt yields should also include the systemic risk of a country's financial system in order to avoid potentially important mis-specification errors. We find evidence that systemic risk of a country's financial institutions and the risk of sovereign governments are inter-related and shocks to these domestic linkages are stronger and longer lasting than international risk spillovers. Thus, the channel in which domestic sovereign debt yields can be affected by another nation's sovereign debt is mostly an indirect one in that shocks to a foreign country's government finances are transmitted to that country's financial system which, in turn, can spill over to the domestic financial system and, ultimately, have a destabilizing effect on the domestic sovereign debt market.     

Network structures and idiosyncratic contagion in the European sovereign credit default swap market

This study combines conditional Granger causality and network analysis to examine the interconnectedness in the European sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market. We determine that the network is unstable in the short term and stable in the long term. Further, we visualize dynamic networks and confirm financial contagion in the 2012 European debt crisis. The sources of risk spillovers and the manner in which spillovers are transferred among countries are identified accordingly. Further, we conclude that interconnectedness can be a pricing factor for determining the sovereign CDS return. The results of the network analysis indicate that the European sovereign CDS market is a complex network system and can serve as a valuable reference for investors and policymakers.     

当前国际政府债务问题的影响与警示

为应对席卷全球的国际金融危机,各国政府纷纷采取经济刺激措施,代替民间企业和金融机构承担危机成本,这不可避免带来一定的政府债务问题。随着时间的推移,部分政府债务问题逐步凸显,成为全球经济走出危机阴影的障碍。文章分析认为,当前国际上政府债务问题呈现脆弱性、复杂性、集中性和长期性特征,成为全球经济复苏的绊脚石,甚至会给世界各国经济带来灾难性影响。文章同时总结了国际政府债务问题带给我国的启示。     

基于逆周期的主权信用评级指标体系研究

现行国际主权信用评级呈现出明显的顺周期特征而广受诟病。在对评级指标体系优化的基础上,采用90个主权国家2005~2012年经济数据进行面板随机效应和门限效应回归,对主权信用评级决定模型进行估计,运用欧债危机发生前后的数据进行模拟评级,结果表明：优化后的指标体系显示出较好的逆周期特征。     

Disentangling contagion among sovereign CDS spreads during the European debt crisis

During the last crisis, developed economies' sovereign credit default swap (hereafter CDS) premia have gained in importance as a tool for approximating credit risk. In this paper, we fit a dynamic factor model to decompose the sovereign CDS spreads of ten OECD economies into three components: a common factor, a second factor driven by European peripheral countries and an idiosyncratic component. We use this decomposition to propose a novel methodology based on the real-time estimates of the model to characterize contagion among the ten series. Our procedure allows the country that triggers contagion in each period, which can be any peripheral economy, to be disentangled. According to our findings, since the onset of the sovereign debt crisis, contagion has played a non-negligible role in the European peripheral countries, which confirms the existence of significant financial linkages between these economies.     

The sovereign-bank rating channel and rating agencies' downgrades during the European debt crisis

We investigate the rating channel for the transmission of changes in sovereign risk to the banking sector, analysing data from Moody's, S&P and Fitch before and during the European debt crisis. Sovereign rating downgrades and negative watch signals have strong effects on bank rating downgrades in the crisis period. The impact is stronger for multiple-notch sovereign rating downgrades, and more pronounced in PIIGS countries. Secondly, we investigate rating agencies' competition in the banking sector during the same periods, finding significant differences in rating policies across the agencies. S&P credit actions tend to be the more independent ones, while Moody's appears to be more cautious, although it is by far the most likely to assign multiple-notch downgrades. In the pre-crisis period, we find no evidence that bank rating actions are linked to sovereign rating signals (nor vice versa) nor to prior bank rating changes by a competing agency.