The cost of firms’ debt financing and the global financial crisis

We provide an assessment of the determinants of the risk premium paid by non-financial corporations on long-term bonds. By looking at 5500 issues over the period 2005–2012, we find that in recent years the sovereign debt market turbulence has been a major driver of corporate risk. Compared with the three-year period 2005–2007 before the global financial crisis, in the years 2010–2012 Italian, Spanish and Portuguese firms paid on average between 70 and 120 basis points of additional premium due to the negative spillovers from the sovereign debt crisis, while German firms received a discount of 40 basis points.     

Sovereign asset values and implications for the credit market

Using the contingent claim approach and market data on sovereign credit default swaps we assess the drivers of a country's risk perception. Deriving market-based asset values for a set of advanced economies we gain insights into the capital markets' perspectives on sovereign creditworthiness. We find the market-based asset values to be positively influenced by debt and to be an early risk indicator for economic developments. In a cross-section analysis we identify drivers of the economic risk of countries. Clustering the countries according to their debt to asset value ratios provides further insights into the market perceptions of sovereign credit risk. For example we find that the asset values of countries with higher ratios react to changes in the global equity market. Countries with a lower ratio react more to the political stability within the country.     

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.     

The Banking Exposure to International Lending: Regional Differences or Common Fundamentals?

The present study unveils the importance of regional characteristics of sovereign debt crises in Latin America and South East Asia. It proposes and empirically corroborates a refinement of the logit approach, for assessing sovereign risk, which draws upon a region‐specific parameterization—composite estimator. The analysis identifies some common features of debt crises that largely reflect domestic solvency, liquidity factors and, to a lesser extent, trade‐balance variables and external shocks. Nonetheless, heterogeneity effects and regional signals point towards the use of region‐specific models. Such approach depicts specific risk factors such as openness and debt burden for Latin America and reserves, output and government expenditure for Asia, thereby suggesting distinctive aspects to debt crises. Out‐of‐sample forecast comparisons further support the use of the composite estimator. The latter outperforms the simple pooled and random effects approach on the basis of various criteria, albeit slightly biased towards false non‐crises predictions.     

英国应对主权债务危机的税收举措

2010年以来,在国际金融危机的影响尚未完全消除的情况下,英国又遇到主权债务危机的强烈冲击。2010年5月12日,英国新任首相、保守党领袖卡梅伦就职不久,即发布了财政紧缩预算案,通过大力压缩政府开支、以增税为主的税收政策调整等一系列措施以重振经济和解决财政困难。本文主要介绍其税收举措,以期对后金融危机时期我国的税制改革和税收政策调整有所借鉴。     

Fragmentation and heterogeneity in the euro-area corporate bond market: Back to normal?

We assess the degree of market fragmentation in the euro-area corporate bond market by disentangling the determinants of the risk premium paid on bonds at origination. By looking at over 2400 bonds we are able to isolate the country-specific effects which are a suitable indicator of the market fragmentation. We find that, after peaking during the sovereign debt crisis, fragmentation shrank in 2013 and receded to pre-crisis levels only in 2014. However, the low level of estimated market fragmentation is coupled with a still high heterogeneity in actual bond yields, challenging the consistency of the new equilibrium.     

欧元向何处去稳定还是动荡

当前欧元区经济和欧债危机形势既存在稳定因素,也存在着不稳定因素。稳定因素包括欧元区经济初步复苏,欧央行实行“准量化宽松政策”,欧盟扩大危机防火墙,欧盟和重债国降低财政赤字;而不稳定因素则包括欧盟财政统一存在困难,欧元区面临决策机制困境。文章综合分析后指出,欧元区仍面临严峻挑战,我国应加强对欧美债务危机潜在影响的预判与应对。     

Unique equilibrium in the Eaton–Gersovitz model of sovereign debt

A common view of sovereign debt markets is that they are prone to multiple equilibria. We prove that, to the contrary, Markov perfect equilibrium is unique in the widely studied model of Eaton and Gersovitz (1981), and we discuss multiple extensions and limitations of this finding. Our results show that no improvement in a borrower׳s reputation for repayment can be self-sustaining, thereby strengthening the Bulow and Rogoff (1989) argument that debt cannot be sustained by reputation alone.     

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.     

A network analysis of global banking: 1978–2010

We analyze the global banking network using data on cross-border banking flows for 184 countries during 1978–2010. We find that the density of the global banking network defined by these flows is pro-cyclical, expanding and contracting with the global cycle of capital flows. We also find that country connectedness in the network tends to rise before banking and debt crises and to fall in their aftermath. Despite a historically unique build-up in aggregate flows prior to the global financial crisis, network density in 2007 was comparable to earlier peaks. This suggests that factors other than connectedness, such as the location of the initial shock to the core of the network, have contributed to the severity of the crisis. The global financial crisis stands out as an unusually large perturbation to the global banking network, with indicators of network density in 2008 reaching all-time lows.     

塞浦路斯银行危机及其引发的思考

塞浦路斯银行危机的爆发使欧洲再次成为世界经济的焦点。近五年来欧元区的灾难没有平息,塞浦路斯银行危机又一次加剧了欧元区的经济动荡,它是欧债危机的延续,塞浦路斯银行危机的发生与希腊债务危机有密切联系。希腊债务危机的教训已刻骨铭心,这次塞浦路斯银行危机更是引人深刻的思考,不仅是在欧元区,在世界的其他国家或地区亦应如此。