Credit distortion and financial crisis

A simple and consistent theory based on credit distortion is developed to understand the origin of financial crises in the emerging markets. We prove that without the guarantee of various government agencies on the credit risk of foreign loans, the interest rate on foreign loans would be the same as the domestic loans, which would eliminate the incentive to borrow foreign loans on a great scale. We demonstrate that the common phenomena preluding the crisis, such as heavy foreign borrowing and overinvestment in real estate, are rational choices when a particular currency is overvalued and cheap credit is available.     

Financial sector structure and financial crisis burden

We consider an overlapping generations model in the presence of financial intermediation. The paper focuses on the analysis of the consequences of a sudden negative repayments shock on financial intermediation capacity and consequently on the economy as a whole. The model exhibits a property of the ‘chain reaction’ when a single macroeconomic shock can lead to the exhaustion of credit resources and subsequently to the collapse of the banking system. To maintain the capability of the system to recover, a regulatory intervention is needed even in presence of the state guarantees on agents’ deposits in the banks. We compare the results for an intermediated economy with those derived for the market economy and draw some broad conclusions regarding the crisis consequences depending on the financial sector structure. We also compare the model predictions with the stylised facts about the Russian financial crisis of 1998.     

美国信用衍生品交易监管立法的评述及对我国的启示与借鉴

本文对信用衍生品交易监管现状作概述后,介评了美国7月通过的包含信用衍生品在内的金融衍生品交易监管立法,我国也于2010年11月开始信用衍生品交易试点.本文提出了制定统一的金融衍生品交易监管法、完善金融监管协调机制、对交易者分层审慎监管、逐步引进集中清算方式、改进信用衍生品监管信息披露要求、适时修改相关监管规则以鼓励银行...     

An equilibrium approach to financial stability analysis: the Colombian case

This paper studies in detail the performance of a general equilibrium model of the financial system when applied to the case of Colombia. This model was designed following closely the work by Goodhart et al. (Ann Fin 2, 1–21, 2006b). The results suggest that the model performs satisfactorily, especially in the prediction of short-run trends (2 years). A shortcoming of the results is a slight overestimation of several trends in the medium to long-term. There is however room to progress, particularly in terms of the incorporation of idiosyncratic features of the Colombian financial system into the model.      

我国信用风险缓释市场发展与创新

随着我国融资市场快速发展,信用风险管理面临严峻挑战,信用风险缓释市场亟待发展创新.然而,受金融危机影响,我国金融从业人员在观念、认识和态度上对信用风险缓释工具(CRM)存在诸多不明.本文通过解析CRM市场结构、CDS定价机制,以及中国CRM市场发展对策,帮助金融从业人员正确认识CRM市场功能,提升CRM市场参与能力,为...     

Currency total return swaps: valuation and risk factor analysis

Abstract

Currency total return swaps (CTRS) are hybrid derivative instruments that allow us to simultaneously hedge against credit and currency risks. We develop a structural credit risk model to evaluate CTRS premia. An empirical test on a sample of 23,005 price observations from 59 underlying issuers yields an average percentage error of around 10%. This indicates that, beyond interest rate risk, firm-specific factors are major drivers of the variations in the valuation of these instruments. Regression analysis of residuals shows that exchange rate determinants account for up to 40% of model pricing errors, indicating that a currency risk premium affects the CTRS price significantly but only marginally, which confirms the prevalence of credit risk in the pricing of CTRS.     

Optimal credit risk transfer, monitored finance, and banks

We examine the implications of optimal credit risk transfer (CRT) for bank-loan monitoring, and the incentives for banks to engage in optimal CRT. In our model, properly designed CRT instruments allow banks to insure themselves against loan losses precisely in those states that signal monitoring. We find that optimal CRT enhances loan monitoring and expands financial intermediation, in contrast to the findings of the previous literature. Optimal CRT instruments are based on loan portfolios rather than individual loans and have credit-enhancement guarantees, pretty much as banks do in practice. But the extent of credit enhancement needs to be precisely delimited. Above that exact level, monitoring incentives are undermined (loan quality deteriorates) and wealth is transferred from the bank's financiers to the bank. Properly designed risk-based capital requirements are shown to prevent such a wealth transfer and to provide banks with the incentive to engage in optimal CRT.     

Pursuing financial stability under an inflation-targeting regime

We evaluate two main views on pursuing financial stability within a flexible inflation-targeting regime. It appears that potential gains from an activist or precautionary approach to promoting financial stability are highly shock dependent. We find support for the conventional view that concern for financial stability generally warrants a longer target horizon for inflation. The preferred target horizon depends on the financial stability indicator and the shock. An extension of the target horizon favoring financial stability may contribute to relatively higher variation in inflation and output.      

Failed bank takeovers and financial stability

Current discussion about the design of bank resolution frameworks suggests that the takeover of a failed bank by an incumbent one has two effects on financial stability. First, the incumbent takeover may boost financial stability by providing bankers with incentives to be solvent so as to profit from their competitors’ failure. Second, the incumbent takeover may spoil financial stability by creating “Systemically Important Financial Institutions”. The innovation of this paper is to capture these two effects in a theoretical model. We show that when incumbent bankers are impatient enough (i.e., they have high discount rates), the second effect prevails over the first one. We discuss the implications of this result for the design of bank resolution policies.     

Monetary policy and financial stability: What role for the futures market?

This paper examines interactions between monetary policy and financial stability. There is a general view that central banks smooth interest rate changes to enhance the stability of financial markets. But might this induce a moral hazard problem, and induce financial institutions to maintain riskier portfolios, the presence of which would further inhibit active monetary policy? Hedging activities of financial institutions, such as the use of interest rate futures and swap markets to reduce risk, should further protect markets against consequences of unforeseen interest rate changes. Thus, smoothing may be both unnecessary and undesirable. The paper shows by a theoretical argument that smoothing interest rates may lead to indeterminacy of the economy's rational expectations equilibrium. Nevertheless, our empirical analysis supports the view that the Federal Reserve smoothes interest rates and reacts to interest rate futures. We add new evidence on the importance for policy of alternative indicators of financial markets stress.     

金融衍生品信用风险管理与制度设计的法律问题

本文以法与金融学的方法分析了金融衍生产品信用风险的双边性质,并认为,我国金融机构在信用风险管理时应采用ISDA主协议或中国银行间市场金融衍生产品交易主协议文本,并应注意文本术语的差异。立法部门和监管部门应积极借鉴发达国家金融衍生产品市场的立法经验和实务操作,完善我国的《破产法》和《担保法》,对净额结算条款、信用支持文件、信用限额和信用衍生产品等法律效力给予明确规定,以增强可操作性。     

Individual financial risk tolerance and the global financial crisis

We investigate individual investors’ tolerance towards financial risk by focusing on changes associated with the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009. Financial risk tolerance (FRT) is analysed longitudinally controlling for demographic, socio‐economic and regional variations. In absolute terms, the change in FRT is small and contrasts with a popular view that risk tolerance is an elastic psychological state overly influenced by the pervading market conditions. Even in the presence of significant financial events, FRT tends to be a reasonably stable attribute in the shorter term but possibly influenced and reshaped by events more gradually over time.     

Enterprise risk management in financial groups: analysis of risk concentration and default risk

In financial groups, enterprise risk management is becoming increasingly important in controlling and managing the different independent legal entities in the group. The aim of this paper is to assess and relate risk concentration and joint default probabilities of the group’s legal entities in order to achieve a more comprehensive picture of a financial group’s risk situation. We further examine the impact of the type of dependence structure on results by comparing linear and nonlinear dependencies using different copula concepts under certain distributional assumptions. Our results show that even if financial groups with different dependence structures do have the same risk concentration factor, joint default probabilities of different sets of subsidiaries can vary tremendously.

Credit risk measurement: Developments over the last 20 years

This paper traces developments in the credit risk measurement literature over the last 20 years. The paper is essentially divided into two parts. In the first part the evolution of the literature on the credit-risk measurement of individual loans and portfolios of loans is traced by way of reference to articles appearing in relevant issues of the Journal of Banking and Finance and other publications. In the second part, a new approach built around a mortality risk framework to measuring the risk and returns on loans and bonds is presented. This model is shown to offer some promise in analyzing the risk-return structures of portfolios of credit-risk exposed debt instruments.     

CDOs and the financial crisis: Credit ratings and fair premia

We study risk and return characteristics of CDOs using the market standard models. We find that fair spreads on CDO tranches are much higher than fair spreads on similarly-rated corporate bonds. Our results imply that credit ratings are not sufficient for pricing, which is surprising given their central role in structured finance markets. This illustrates limitations of the rating methodologies that are solely based on real-world default probabilities or expected losses and do not capture risk premia. We also demonstrate that CDO tranches have large exposure to systematic risk and thus their ratings and prices are likely to decline substantially when credit conditions deteriorate.     

信用衍生品市场的国际经验与中国发展——基于金融结构和宏观稳定的分析

信用衍生品是国际资本市场上最具创新性的金融工具之一。发展信用衍生品市场不仅可以转移金融机构的信用风险,同时也可以缓解金融脱媒问题,防止资本市场快速膨胀、扭曲银行和金融体系。然而,信用衍生品也有其另一面。美国金融危机显示信用衍生品与金融结构具有复杂的联系机制,可能冲击宏观稳定。本文提出,我国应深入剖析美国的信用衍生品市场与金融结构关系,跟踪国际市场的改革和发展方向,探索符合国情的信用衍生品市场发展道路。     

Credit default swap prices as risk indicators of listed German banks

This paper explores empirically the usefulness of credit default swap (CDS) prices as market indicators. The sample of reference entities consists of large, internationally active German banks and the observation period covers 3 years. By analysing the explanatory power of three risk sources: idiosyncratic credit risk, systematic credit risk and liquidity risk, we gain important insights into modeling the dynamics of CDS spreads. The impact of systematic risk, for example, has three components; one is related to the overall state of the economy, another related to the risk of the internationally active banking sector, and the third is an unobservable systematic factor. Default probabilities, inferred from a tractable reduced form model for CDS spreads, are compared with expected default frequencies from the Moody’s KMV model. The results lend empirical support to the hypothesis that structural models can be less informative than reduced-form models of CDS spreads in the case of banks with major investment banking activities as the leverage loses explanatory power. Although the CDS market appears to have matured over the observation period, during certain periods premiums for liquidity risk can increase substantially thus limiting the value of CDS spreads as market indicators. We conclude that equity prices and CDS premia should be considered together to fully exploit the information content of both market indicators and to mitigate their respective drawbacks.

Anomalies and financial distress

This paper explores commonalities across asset pricing anomalies. In particular, we assess implications of financial distress for the profitability of anomaly-based trading strategies. Strategies based on price momentum, earnings momentum, credit risk, dispersion, idiosyncratic volatility, and capital investments derive their profitability from taking short positions in high credit risk firms that experience deteriorating credit conditions. In contrast, the value-based strategy derives most of its profitability from taking long positions in high credit risk firms that survive financial distress and subsequently realize high returns. The accruals anomaly is an exception. It is robust among high and low credit risk firms in all credit conditions.     

Has the financial system become safer after the crisis? The changing nature of financial institution risk

Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the question of whether the U.S. financial system has become less risky remains unanswered. On the one side, new regulations including Dodd-Frank and Basel III have made improvements by requiring higher bank capital, and financial institutions themselves have reduced risk-taking activities. On the other side, it has been argued that “the fundamental risks remained and the efforts of regulators and politicians were simply rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.” (Baily and Elliott, 2013) This paper highlights the changing nature of financial institution risk from 2005 to 2011. It finds that while these institutions have become less risky individually after the crisis, the financial market has become more vulnerable to systemic contagion. The causal inference that the crisis and the post-crisis legislation have gradually changed the nature of financial institution risk is drawn from a quasi-experimental design. This finding suggests that the ever more integrated financial system might experience more synchronized contractions in future crises, providing empirical support for the proposals of the inter-bank collective regulation of banks by Acharya (2009) in addition to the intra-bank collective regulations as in Froot and Stein (1998) and BIS (1996, 1999).