Sovereign debt markets in turbulent times: Creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects

In 2007, countries in the euro zone periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits, and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recessions, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and, surprisingly, so did the share of the debt held by domestic creditors. Credit was reallocated from the private sector to the public sector, reducing investment and deepening the recessions even further. To account for these facts, we propose a simple model of sovereign risk in which debt can be traded in secondary markets. The model has two key ingredients: creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects. Creditor discrimination arises because, in turbulent times, sovereign debt offers a higher expected return to domestic creditors than to foreign ones. This provides incentives for domestic purchases of debt. Crowding-out effects arise because private borrowing is limited by financial frictions. This implies that domestic debt purchases displace productive investment. The model shows that these purchases reduce growth and welfare, and may lead to self-fulfilling crises. It also shows how crowding-out effects can be transmitted to other countries in the euro zone, and how they may be addressed by policies at the European level.     

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.     

Sovereign tail risk

We provide a new measure of sovereign country risk exposure (SCRE) to global sovereign tail risk based on information incorporated in 5-year sovereign CDS spreads. Our panel regressions with quarterly data from 53 countries show that macro risks have strong explanatory power for SCRE. Results show that SCRE increases for countries with less fiscal space, higher interest rates, and financial stability concerns. Exposure sensitivity to public sector leverage is shown to increase non-linearly with public debt and to decrease with central banks’ sovereign debt programs. Our results imply that good forward-looking macro-finance fundamentals, such as high expected GDP growth and low credit-to-GDP ratios protect countries against sovereign risk especially in times of global distress.     

关于欧洲主权债务问题与欧元区域制度改革的思考

近来,希腊、葡萄牙、西班牙和爱尔兰等多个欧元区国家均面临主权债务违约风险。这一问题的发生,既有希腊等国自身财政管理的原因,也反映出欧元区体制中存在的一系列长期性、结构性和制度性问题。如果不能妥善解决欧元区国家的主权债务问题,不仅将拖累欧元区经济发展,也会对世界经济金融复苏造成冲击。欧洲主权债务问题的出现,对我国财政预算管理也有一定警示作用。     

主权债务风险跨国溢出研究——来自频域的新证据

本文从国家间主权债务风险溢出的持续期角度出发,采用基于广义方差分解谱表示的BK溢出指数方法,首次从频域视角对短期和长期下的主权债务风险跨国溢出效应进行研究。研究发现:第一,短期和长期下的主权债务风险跨国溢出效应均较为显著,并且时域下的总溢出主要由短期的风险溢出主导。第二,14个国家的短期和长期风险输出水平呈线性关系,但对于风险输入,不同类型国家出现分化并形成两个聚类,新兴市场国家的短期风险输入水平远高于长期,其具有较强的“短期脆弱性”。第三,风险输出国的自身风险越大,对他国的长期溢出水平越高,风险输入国的自身风险越大,接收他国的短期溢出水平越高,并且两两国家间的进出口规模、金融市场一体化水平和经济周期协同性与其长期风险溢出水平呈正相关关系,而与其短期风险溢出水平的关系并不显著。第四,短期和长期的主权债务风险溢出网络都呈现明显的区域聚集特征,并且各国在短期溢出网络中主要与同区域以及经济金融环境相似的国家连接,在长期溢出网络中则通过经贸关系将连接范围扩大至不同区域甚至经济金融环境差异较大的国家。     

主权债务风险跨国溢出研究——来自频域的新证据

本文从国家间主权债务风险溢出的持续期角度出发,采用基于广义方差分解谱表示的BK溢出指数方法,首次从频域视角对短期和长期下的主权债务风险跨国溢出效应进行研究。研究发现:第一,短期和长期下的主权债务风险跨国溢出效应均较为显著,并且时域下的总溢出主要由短期的风险溢出主导。第二,14个国家的短期和长期风险输出水平呈线性关系,但对于风险输入,不同类型国家出现分化并形成两个聚类,新兴市场国家的短期风险输入水平远高于长期,其具有较强的“短期脆弱性”。第三,风险输出国的自身风险越大,对他国的长期溢出水平越高,风险输入国的自身风险越大,接收他国的短期溢出水平越高,并且两两国家间的进出口规模、金融市场一体化水平和经济周期协同性与其长期风险溢出水平呈正相关关系,而与其短期风险溢出水平的关系并不显著。第四,短期和长期的主权债务风险溢出网络都呈现明显的区域聚集特征,并且各国在短期溢出网络中主要与同区域以及经济金融环境相似的国家连接,在长期溢出网络中则通过经贸关系将连接范围扩大至不同区域甚至经济金融环境差异较大的国家。     

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。     

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.     

Vine copulas and applications to the European Union sovereign debt analysis

European sovereign debt crisis has become a very popular topic since late 2009. In this paper, sovereign debt crisis is investigated by calculating the probabilities of the potential future crisis of 11 countries in the European Union. We use sovereign spreads of the European countries against Germany as targets and apply the GARCH based vine copula simulation technique. The methodology solves the difficulties of calculating the probabilities of rarely happening events and takes sovereign debt movement dependence, especially tail dependence, into consideration. Results indicate that Italy and Spain are the most likely next victims of the sovereign debt crisis, followed by Ireland, France and Belgium. The UK, Sweden and Denmark, which are outside the euro area, are the most financially stable countries in the sample.     

Sovereign CDS Spreads,Volatility, and Liquidity: Evidence from 2010 German Short Sale Ban

The paper examines global impact of 2010 German short sale ban on sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, volatility, and liquidity across 54 countries. We find that CDS spreads continue rising after the ban in the debt crisis region, which suggests that the short selling ban is incapable of suppressing soaring borrowing costs in these countries. However, we find that the ban helps stabilize the CDS market by reducing CDS volatility. The reduction in CDS volatility is greater in the eurozone than that in the non‐eurozone. Furthermore, we find that the CDS market liquidity has been impaired during the ban for the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) countries. In contrast, there are no dramatic changes in the market liquidity for non‐PIIGS eurozone and non‐eurozone samples. The findings suggest that the short sale ban is ineffective to reduce sovereign borrowing costs in the debt crisis region if the underlying economy has not been significantly improved.     

Question the Unquestionable Beauty of A Collective Proceeding for All Sovereign Debt Claims

The new challenges presented by the current Eurozone crisis and the NML Capital v. Argentina case are likely to shift the international community's attention from holdout behavior in foreign bonds restructuring to inter‐creditor issues. In the past years, many academics, and nongovernmental organizations concerned with debt relief, have put forward proposals to create a bankruptcy regime for states. But none of these proposals has seriously examined what rules should apply to treatment among creditors. Moreover, all insist that there must be a collective proceeding for all sovereign debt claims, without explaining why. This approach is simply taken for granted, as it is one of the fundamental principles of bankruptcy law. The article questions this orthodoxy through examining the nature of sovereign debt crisis, the feature of the limited pool of sovereign assets, and the nonliquidable fact of the sovereign debtor. It also argues that the common pool problem does not exist in the sovereign debt context.     

Understanding and managing interest rate risk at banks

Banks in many countries hold significant quantity of bonds issued by their sovereign. This nexus of bank balance sheets with the sovereign debt can amplify in a two-way loop the effect of a rise in sovereign debt yields on banks and vice-versa. The rise in sovereign debt yields tends to be episodic, exhibiting conditional volatility, and banks need to manage this risk proactively to dampen the two-way loop. Lessons are drawn from this perspective for understanding and managing of interest rate (or ‘duration’) risk at Indian banks from their holdings of government securities. Moral hazard implications of regulatory forbearance policies when the two-way loop materializes are also discussed.     

二十世纪的德国债务

在二十世纪两次世界大战以后,德国欠下了巨额债务。为在恢复并发展经济的同时偿还债务,德国及其债权国做出了大量努力。1990年德国统一后,偿付了伦敦债务协定中涉及的债务,但其对犹太人和以色列所欠下的道义上的债务永远无法偿还。     

Identifying the effects of an exchange rate depreciation on country risk: Evidence from a natural experiment

A natural experiment is used to study exchange rate depreciation and perceived sovereign risk. France suspended coinage of silver in 1876 provoking a significant exogenous depreciation of all silver standard countries versus gold standard currencies like the British pound – the currency in which their debt was payable. The evidence suggests an exchange rate depreciation can significantly increase sovereign risk if a country is exposed to foreign currency debt. We implement a difference-in-differences estimator and find that the average silver country's spread on hard currency debt increased over ten percent relative to non-silver countries.     

Sovereign debt renegotiation and credit default swaps

A credit default swap (CDS) contract provides insurance against default. This paper incorporates the contract into a sovereign default model and demonstrates that the existence of a CDS market results in lower default probability, higher debt levels, and lower financing costs for the country. Uncertainty over the insurance payout when the debt is renegotiated explains why in the data, as the output declines, the CDS spread becomes lower than the bond spread. Finally, my results show that the 2012 CDS naked ban, that decreased the levels of CDS for European countries, is a welfare reducing policy.     

Financial stress,sovereign debt and economic activity in industrialized countries: Evidence from dynamic threshold regressions

We analyze how the impact of a change in the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio on economic growth depends on the level of debt, the stress level on the financial market and the membership in a monetary union. A dynamic growth model is put forward demonstrating that debt affects macroeconomic activity in a non-linear manner due to amplifications from the financial sector. Employing dynamic country-specific and dynamic panel threshold regression methods, we study the non-linear relation between the growth rate and the debt-to-GDP ratio using quarterly data for sixteen industrialized countries for the period 1981Q1-2013Q2. We find that the debt-to-GDP ratio has impaired economic growth primarily during times of high financial stress and only for countries of the European Monetary Union and not for the stand-alone countries in our sample. A high debt-to-GDP ratio by itself does not seem to necessarily negatively affect growth if financial markets are calm.     

Does the European Financial Stability Facility Bail Out Sovereigns or Banks? An Event Study

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank credit default swap (CDS) spreads, and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private beneficiaries were bank creditors. Furthermore, countries with banking systems heavily exposed to southern Europe and Ireland benefited, as evidenced by lower sovereign CDS spreads. The combined gains of bank debt holders and shareholders exceed the increase in the value of their banks’ sovereign debt exposures, suggesting that banks saw their contingent claim on the financial safety net increase in value.     

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.     

Bank productivity growth and convergence in the European Union during the financial crisis

This paper examines the bank productivity growth and integration process for the 28 EU countries during three main phases of the financial crisis: the U.S. subprime crisis (2007–2008), the global financial crisis (2009–2010) and the sovereign debt crisis (2010–2012). We extend the Malmquist Productivity Index by applying an additive two-stage DEA model. This allows us to explore the sources of growth in different stages of production. Furthermore, we assess the integration of European banks by analyzing the β-convergence and σ-convergence of the two-stage Productivity Index. Our results show a productivity growth during the U.S. subprime crisis, but a consistent decline during the global financial crisis. The loss of competitiveness of the European banking system is due to the drop in growth of the performance stage and technical change. Finally, we find a strong convergence pattern during the financial crisis, mainly driven by the catch up process of some Eastern countries and the drop in performance of Western countries.     

我国的主权信用评级被低估了吗

本文以1996—2011年间45个国家的宏观经济数据和惠誉的主权信用评级数据,运用一般面板线性回归和有序概率模型研究了我国的主权信用评级是否被低估的问题。结果发现,国际评级机构并没有刻意低估我国的主权信用评级,其对我国主权信用评级的测算方法并不明显有别于其他国家。但是,由于评级体系的倾向性和我国地方政府债务不透明等原因,导致我国的主权信用评级客观上存在被低估的可能。