Time varying contagion in EMU government bond spreads

We analyze the time varying behavior of pure contagion effects between Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) government bond spreads before and during the subprime mortgage crisis and the EMU debt crisis. By conducting a rolling window analysis, we are able to monitor the evolution of pure contagion effects and the changing influence of exogenous factors over time. Importantly, this is done without an ex-ante specification of the contagion window. Hence, we are able to determine the exact timing of the start and end for the different contagion periods. In contrast to related studies, we use a slightly different definition of contagious events and show that this approach leads to different conclusions about the progression of the EMU debt crisis. First, the main sources of pure contagion in the later phase of the EMU debt crisis appear to be Italy and Spain and not Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Furthermore, we find that substantial contagion effects among EMU government bond spreads (caused by Ireland and Portugal) already arise during the subprime mortgage crisis and not only during the EMU debt crisis, as one might expect.     

Debt-overhang banking crises: Detecting and preventing systemic risk

This paper shows how the debt-overhang distortion on bank lending can generate a self-fulfilling-expectations banking crisis accompanied by a plunge in the value of banks’ assets and a contraction of bank lending and economic activity. Moral hazard in banking adds an additional channel that can generate multiple equilibria, worsen the debt-overhang distortion, and deepen the crisis. Some signals of systemic risk include: high volatility and the presence of two modes in the probability distribution functions of the returns on bank-issued bonds and on portfolios of bank-issued bonds and equities; and high correlation between the returns on bank-issued bonds. Macroprudential regulation should discourage the exposure of banks to the economic and financial cycle by raising the capital requirements for banks with more cyclical assets.