Unilateral CVA for CDS in a contagion model with stochastic pre-intensity and interest

Price of a financial derivative with unilateral counterparty credit risk equals to the price of an otherwise risk-free derivative minus a credit value adjustment (CVA) component, which can be seen as a call option on investor's NPV with strike 0. Thus modeling volatility of NPV is the foundation for CVA valuation. This paper assumes that default times of counterparty and reference firm follow a special contagion model with stochastic pre-intensities that allows for explicit formulas for default probabilities. Stochastic interest rate is also incorporated to account for positive correlation between pre-intensity and interest. Survival measure approach is employed to calculate NPV of a risk-free CDS, and semi-analytical solution for CVA is obtained through affine specifications. Numerical analysis shows that contagion has more significant impact on CVA than diffusion of pre-intensities, and the positive correlation between interest and reference firm's pre-intensity has monotonic decreasing impact on CVA.     

The Interactions between the Credit Default Swap and the Bond Markets in Financial Turmoil

We analyse the links between credit default swap (CDS) and bond spreads in order to determine which one is the leading market in the price discovery process. To do that, we construct a sample of CDS premia and bond spreads on a generic 5‐year bond for 17 financials and 18 sovereigns. First, we run panel vector error correction model estimations, showing that the CDS market has a lead over the bond market for financial institutions. This also holds for high‐yield sovereigns, whereas the reverse is found for low‐yield sovereigns in the core of the euro area. We interpret these results according to the relative liquidity of both markets for different types of entities. Second, we check for nonlinearities in the adjustment process. Results show that the CDS market's lead is amplified when default risk increases, during crisis periods, as well as continuously when CDS premia increase.     

The relationship between risk-neutral and actual default probabilities: the credit risk premium

The study investigates empirically the relationship between the risk-neutral measure Q and the real-world measure P. We study the ratio between the risk-neutral and actual default intensities, which we call the coverage ratio or the relative credit risk premium. Actual default intensities are derived from rating agencies annual transition matrices, while risk-neutral default intensities are bootstrapped from CDS quotes of European corporates. We quantify the average risk premium and its changes over time. Compared to related literature, special attention is given to the effects of the recent financial and European sovereign crises. We find that average credit risk premia rose substantially and that post-crisis levels are still higher than those observed before the financial crisis. This observation is especially true for high-quality debt and if it persists, it will have an impact on corporates funding costs. The quantification and revision of risk premia contributes to the discussion of the credit spread puzzle and could give extra insights in valuation models that start from real-world estimates. Our work is furthermore important in the context of state aid assessment. The real economic value (REV) methodology, applied by the European Commission to evaluate impaired portfolios, is based on a long-term average risk premium.     

Firm credit risk in normal times and during the crisis: are banks less risky?

Bank solvency was a major issue during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, but bank credit default swap (CDS) spreads were almost always below nonbank CDS spreads. What is the reason for this gap? Are banks perceived to be less risky? This study empirically decomposes CDS premia for 45 major banks and 167 large industrial firms from Europe and the US. It turns out that expected losses are usually somewhat lower for banks than for nonbanks, but expected losses contribute relatively little to the observed CDS premia. CDS spreads for banks and nonbanks differ mainly because market participants require a lower compensation for bearing bank credit risk. The quite persistent difference in the credit risk premia for banks and nonbanks disappears only temporarily during the crisis.     

Comments on “Consumption Values of Trade Unions”

The credit default swap (CDS) is implicated in the global financial crises because a vast market for securities collateralized by subprime mortgages and consumer debt could not have materialized if hedge funds and other holders of these instruments lacked a means of hedging default "risk." The argument is made that the CDS is an inherently defective concept because it is based on the assumption that future states of the economy are subject to probabilistic risk as opposed to uncertainty in the Keynes-Knight-Shackle-Davidson sense. The CDS also manifests the paradox of derivatives. By enabling individual money managers to safely increase leverage, it causes a system-wide buildup of leverage and financial fragility.     

Sovereign default risk and state-owned bank fragility in emerging markets: evidence from China and Russia

In this paper we investigate the interdependence of the sovereign default risk and banking system fragility in two major emerging markets, China and Russia, using credit default swaps as a proxy for default risk. Both countries’ banking industries have strong ties with their governments and public sector, even after a series of significant reforms in the last two decades. Our analysis is built on the case studies of each country’s two biggest banks. We employ a bivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) and vector error correction (VECM) framework to analyse the short- and long-run dynamics of the chosen CDS prices. We use Granger causality to describe the direction of the discovered dynamics. We find evidence of a stable long-run relationship between sovereign and bank CDS spreads in the chosen time period. The more stable relationship is found in cases where the biggest state-owned universal banks in emerging markets are closely managed by the government. But the fragility of those banks does not directly affect the state of public finances. However, in cases where state-owned banks directly participate in large governmental projects, banking fragility may result in the deterioration of state funds, while raising the risk of sovereign default.     

Do stress tests matter? A study on the impact of the disclosure of stress test results on European financial stocks and CDS markets

During the recent sovereign debt crisis, the European Banking Authority conducted two stress tests on European banks in order to gauge their capital needs, core Tier-1 ratios and ratios of resilience to adverse shocks. We assess the informational content of the disclosure of the stress test outcomes. We conclude that the stress tests conveyed new information and that the outcomes were not anticipated by the stock market but were partially anticipated by the credit default swap (CDS) market. However, while the stock market reacted to the disclosure of the stress test outcomes, in the CDS market there is some evidence of a ‘reverse’ reaction. Moreover, the publication of the outcomes of the stress tests had a stronger impact on the stock prices of riskier financial institutions. A similar pattern is evident in the CDS market, albeit narrowed to one of the stress tests and amid the financial institutions with higher perceived credit risk.     

The democratic (dis)advantage: The conditional impact of democracy on credit risk and sovereign default

Many have argued that democracies are able to make credible commitments to repay their debts and consequently enjoy higher sovereign credit ratings. In contrast to this expectation, I argue that the advantage of democracies in credit ratings is conditional on the countries' level of financial vulnerability and adjustment needs. Because democracies have more diffuse decision-making and are more accountable to the public, they encounter greater difficulty than autocracies in passing unpopular economic adjustment measures. Thus, I argue that democracies with high debt levels and low foreign reserve assets experience worse credit outcomes, whereas democracies with low vulnerability experience more positive outcomes. In a sample of up to 96 developing countries, I show that democracies have worse credit ratings and CDS Spreads and are more likely to default than their autocratic counterparts when foreign reserves are low relative to external debt. Notably, I also show that large debt burdens increase credit risk mainly in more democratic countries. I further test the causal pathway of the democratic advantage by constructing democracy scores of “market-friendly” and “adjustment-difficulty” democracy, finding that democracy worsens debt outcomes due to adjustment difficulty. These findings help to revise and clarify the causal logic surrounding the democratic advantage hypothesis.     

Risks of Latin America sovereign debts before and after the financial crisis

We investigate the financial determinants of the return and volatility of sovereign CDS spread from six major Latin American countries before and after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Other than CBOE VIX index, we also find that global factors including US Baa–Aaa default yield, TED spread and US Treasury rate all contribute to the changes in these sovereign CDS spread. Although global risk aversion (VIX) is a significant determinant of sovereign debt spread, in the years after the crisis, the emphasis has shifted towards short-term refinancing risk (TED). Furthermore, the risk of Greek sovereign debt crisis also transmitted Latin American CDS spreads immediately, but only in the post-Lehman sub-period. These findings provide implications for international bonds and credit derivatives trading strategies.     

Study of the effect of a Financial Transaction Tax on the corporate cost of capital

We study the impact of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT or Tobin Tax) on the corporate cost of capital. We consider the results on the impact of transaction costs on implied volatility and then use the utility maximization of a market-maker and its asymptotic solution. The FTT impact on volatility, in highly liquid equity option markets, is within two decimals (‘the tick value’) and is insignificant. The volatility impact is considerable for illiquid option markets especially long-dated equity options, used for the hedging of credit default swaps (CDS). The credit spread increase is computed using a structural model, and amounts between 30 and 60 basis points (b.p). per annum, for 5–20 year maturities, and a volatility level of 30%. The impact decreases with the corporation leverage ratio. We calibrate from the CDS market the implied volatility for six European corporations and find an increase in spreads by up to 60%. For a corporation with a 343 b.p. 5-year CDS spread, the increase amounts to 174 b.p. On the basis of this sample, the impact we find is between 5 and 20 times higher than the one computed in the study of Lendvai et al. which has been used by European Union authorities to assess the impact on the cost of capital.     

Testing for Regime Changes in Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper examines whether the efficiency market hypothesis for the Greek sovereign debt holds. As in Blanco et al. (2005) we test the theoretical equivalence of credit default swap (CDS) and spreads that dictates a CI relationship between the two. The main innovation of the present analysis is the use of a threshold vector error-correction (TVECM) model, thus allowing thresholds within the sample covering the period 1990 to 2010. Moreover, by employing this methodology we are able to evaluate the degree and dynamics of transaction costs resulting from various events due to external market imperfections but also domestic factors. The main hypothesis we test is to what extent spreads and CDS are indeed integrated that may result in an efficient and integrated segniorage capital market. Our findings support the gradual integration hypothesis. We find that spreads and CDS are cointegrated, though threshold effects are also revealed in terms of events that have impacted on markets.     

Evaluating sovereign risk spillovers on domestic banks during the European debt crisis

Using a Markov-switching model with time-varying probabilities, spillovers from sovereign to domestic bank CDS spreads during the European debt crisis for a set of 14 European countries and 30 European banks are investigated. Our model is able to capture how the increased sovereign risk observed between 2010 and 2013 throughout Europe has impacted i) the probability that banks fall into a crisis regime and ii) the probability that banks stay in the crisis regime. The latter state is characterized by a high volatility and large positive returns of CDS spreads. Different regime-dependent indicators have been computed to assess heterogeneity within the region. The evidence indicates that the intensification of sovereign risk observed during the European debt crisis has positively and significantly driven the regime shifts in volatility of the bank CDS spreads due to increased risk aversion. The results show that the increase in sovereign credit risk seems to have generated second-round effects for some banks that have experienced a deterioration in their funding conditions due to a rise in the domestic sovereign default risk. Overall, our results suggest that sovereign CDS spreads can be considered good forewarning indicators for predicting the evolution of bank CDS spreads. We also find that the effects differ depending on the country and the financial institution. This result suggests that banks are heterogeneously exposed to sovereign credit risk within the same country. One argument relates to the size of these financial institutions and the domestic exposure to sovereign debt.     

Do Market‐based Indicators Anticipate Rating Agencies? Evidence for International Banks

This paper analyses the ability of credit default swap (CDS) spreads, bond spreads and stock prices to anticipate the decisions of the main rating agencies, regarding the largest international banks. Conditional on negative rating events, all the three indicators show significant abnormal changes before both announcements of review and actual credit rating changes, but rating actions still seem to convey new information to the market. Results for positive rating events are less clear‐cut with the market indicators generally showing abnormal behaviours only in conjunction with the events. As for the predictive power of the financial indicators examined, the CDS market is particularly useful for negative events and stock prices for positive events. However, all indicators also send many false signals and are to be interpreted with care.     

Sovereign credit ratings,growth volatility and the global financial crisis

Using monthly data from January 1996 to May 2010 for a panel of 76 developed and emerging economies and adopting an instrumental variable (IV) estimation technique by correcting for both heterogeneity and endogeneity with the generalized two-stage least squares (G2SLS, EC2SLS) procedure method suggested by Balestra and Varadharajan-Krishnakumar (1987) and Baltagi and Li (1995), this article provides empirical evidence that volatility of per capita GDP growth is reduced when there are positive changes in credit ratings; in other words when sovereign credit risk improves. To deal with potential simultaneity between sovereign credit ratings and output volatility, a system (3SLS) approach is undertaken, and our findings remain robust. By weakening the volatility dampening effects of ratings changes, it is found that the global financial crisis (GFC) has enhanced macroeconomic volatility. One of the channels via which sovereign rating changes affect growth volatility is the financial markets’ repricing of sovereign default risk that is reflected in sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads and its volatility.     

Dynamics of CDS spread indexes of US financial sectors

This article examines the Credit Default Swap (CDS) spread index for three sectors, banking, financial services and insurance, in the short and long run. In the long run, the results show that the index of the insurance sector which sells the long term CDS contracts has the highest adjustment, while the banking sector is not error correcting. In the short run, although the insurance sector CDS spread index has general predictive power of all sector CDS spreads, the evidence suggests that the banking sector particularly leads the financial services and this in turn leads the insurance sector, implying a leading sector CDS pricing role for the banking spreads in the short run. The short run sensitivity Generalized Impulse Response Function (GIRF) and Generalized Variance Decomposition (GVDC) analyses also demonstrate that the sectors’ credit risk responds more to credit events in the banking sector than in the other two sectors other than their own over a 50 day horizon. However, the lowest cross sector CDS shock impacts in the short run come from the insurance sector. These results are useful for regulators wishing to embark on new regulations of these financial institutions such as Basel III.     

Bank distress and firms’ investment during the Great Recession - evidence from Ireland

This article investigates the impact of bank distress on firms’ performance using unique data during the Great Recession for Ireland. The results show that bank distress, measured as banks’ credit default swap spreads (CDS), has negatively and statistically significantly affected firms’ investment expenditures. Interestingly, firms with access to alternative sources of external finance are not impacted by bank distress. The results are robust to accounting for external finance dependence, demand and trade sensitivities, which affect firm performance and the demand for credit.     

Analysis of sectoral credit default cycle dependency with wavelet networks: Evidence from Turkey

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between industrial production and sectoral credit defaults (non-performing loans ratio) cycle by wavelet network analysis in Turkey over the period January 2001–November 2007. We use feedforward neural network based wavelet decomposition to analyze the contemporaneous connection between industrial production cycles and sectoral credit default cycles at different time scales between 2 and 64 months. The main findings for Turkey indicates that industrial production cycles effect the sectoral credit default cycles at different time scales and thus indicate that the creditors should consider the multiscale sectoral cycles in order to minimize credit default rates.     

Industry-level determinants of the linkage between credit and stock markets

This paper examines the relationship between US credit default swaps (CDS) and stock returns on an industry-wide basis across a number of investment horizons, with particular focus on the major determinants of such a relationship. Wavelet analysis is first applied to extract the CDS–stock wavelet correlation for each US industry. Then, Bayesian Model Averaging is employed to identify the key driving factors of the industry CDS–stock wavelet correlations at short- and long-term horizons. The empirical results indicate that the wavelet correlations between the industry CDS and stock returns are primarily negative over time and across time scales. Moreover, the CDS–stock correlation at longer horizons exhibits a much more stable pattern than its counterpart at shorter time frames. The results also demonstrate that the volatility of US Treasury and stock markets, as measured by the MOVE and VIX indices, respectively, the volatility of volatility, as captured by the VVIX index, and US economic policy uncertainty, as measured by the EPU index, are the most robust determinants of the correlation between CDS and stock returns at shorter and longer horizons for most US industries. In contrast, the Fama–French systematic equity factors exhibit a practically negligible explanatory power on the CDS–stock link.     

Standby Letters of Credit and Bank Default Risk

This paper examines the relationship between Australian banks' use of standby letters of credit, an off-balance sheet direct credit sub stitute, and default risk on bank liabilities. We find strong support for the sub-optimal investment (or under-investment) hypothesis. Riskier banks, defined as those with higher CD premiums, and those with higher proportions of long-maturity liabilities make greater use of SLCs than less risky banks. However, there is little evidence of a feed-back effect from SLCs to bank default risk     

Equity market information and credit risk signaling: A quantile cointegrating regression approach

Investigating linkages between credit and equity markets, we consider daily aggregate U.S. CDS spreads as well as well-chosen equity market and implied volatility indexes over ten years. We describe such robust (to spurious correlation) relationship with the quantile cointegrating regression approach. Such approach handles extreme quantiles/CDS values and their behavior with respect to the equity market's influence. Heteroskedastic patterns such as time-varying variance, but also autocorrelation, skewness and leptokurtosis are captured. Thus, the sensitivity of aggregate CDS spreads to equity market price and volatility channels is accurately measured across quantiles and spreads. Such quantile-dependent sensitivity exhibits asymmetric responses to equity market shocks. A sub-period analysis investigates potential regime shifts in estimated quantile cointegrating regressions. Quantile cointegrating coefficients vary over time and quantiles, and exhibit different magnitudes across sub-periods and spreads. Therefore, the relationship is unstable over time. We also propose a scenario analysis and risk signaling application for credit risk management prospects. Under specific risk levels, credit risky situations are described conditional on the equity market's information over time, and related expected aggregate CDS spreads are computed. Estimated conditional quantiles/CDS spreads act as credit alert triggers.