The effect of corporate diversification on credit risk: new evidence from European credit default swap spreads

This article investigates the impact of corporate diversification on credit risk. To our best knowledge, this is the first paper to use credit default swap (CDS) spreads instead of bond yield or revalued book values to test the risk‐reduction hypothesis. The analysis relies upon a sample of STOXX^® EUROPE 600 index members and covers the years 2010–2014. After controlling for various CDS‐ and firm‐specific variables, we find that diversification strategies do not significantly lower CDS premiums. Multilevel mediation analysis further shows that information asymmetries overcompensate the risk‐reducing effects resulting from corporate diversification.     

An Empirical Comparison of Credit Spreads between the Bond Market and the Credit Default Swap Market

This paper compares the pricing of credit risk in the bond market and the fast-growing credit default swap (CDS) market. The cointegration test confirms that the theoretical parity relationship between the two credit spreads holds as a long-run equilibrium condition. Nevertheless, substantial deviation from the parity can arise in the short run. The panel data study and the VECM analysis both suggest that the deviation is largely due to the higher responsiveness of CDS premia to changes in credit conditions. Moreover, it exhibits a certain degree of persistence in that only 10% of price discrepancies can be removed within a business day.     

Implied liquidity risk premium in the term structure of sovereign credit default swap and bond spreads

In this study, we focus on the dynamic properties of the risk-neutral liquidity risk premium specific to the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) and bond markets. We show that liquidity risk has a non-trivial role and participates directly to the variation over time of the term structure of sovereign CDS and bond spreads for both the pre- and crisis periods. Secondly, our results indicate that the time-varying bond and CDS liquidity risk premium move in opposite directions which imply that when bond liquidity risk is high, CDS liquidity risk is low (and vice versa), which may in turn be consistent with the substitution effect between CDS and bond markets. Finally, our Granger causality analysis reveals that, although the magnitude of bond and CDS liquidity risk is substantially different, there is a strong liquidity flow between the CDS and the bond markets, however, no market seems to consistently lead the other.     

Valuation of credit default swaps and swaptions

This paper presents a conceptual and general framework for valuation of single-name credit derivatives. The general subfiltration approach of [J-R] to modelling default risk, which includes the Cox-process setting of [L], is integrated with a numeraire invariant approach. Several known results are reformulated and extended in this framework. New concepts and results are presented for change of numeraire in presence of default and valuation of credit swaptions. A new formula on fractional recovery of pre-default value is derived, generalizing that of [D-S]. A Black-Scholes formula for credit default swaptions due to [S] is shown to serve as a least-squares approximation to the general case.Received: 1 November 2003, Mathematics Subject Classification: 91B28, 60G44, 60G40JEL Classification: E43, G13I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions.     

How the Subprime Crisis went global: Evidence from bank credit default swap spreads

How did the Subprime Crisis, a problem in a small corner of U.S. financial markets, affect the entire global banking system? To shed light on this question we use principal components analysis to identify common factors in the movement of banks' credit default swap spreads. We find that fortunes of international banks rise and fall together even in normal times along with short-term global economic prospects. But the importance of common factors rose steadily to exceptional levels from the outbreak of the Subprime Crisis to past the rescue of Bear Stearns, reflecting a diffuse sense that funding and credit risk was increasing. Following the failure of Lehman Brothers, the interdependencies briefly increased to a new high, before they fell back to the pre-Lehman elevated levels – but now they more clearly reflected heightened funding and counterparty risk. After Lehman's failure, the prospect of global recession became imminent, auguring the further deterioration of banks' loan portfolios. At this point the entire global financial system had become infected.     

Price limits in futures markets: effects on the price discovery process and volatility

Price limits are actively employed by many futures exchanges as a regulatory mechanism directed at reducing volatility and improving price discovery process. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether price limits achieve these goals without affecting market liquidity for a number of agricultural futures contracts. We employ models of changing volatility in order to show that price limits do not appear to significantly reduce market volatility. In addition, we find evidence confirming the hypothesis that price limits delay price discovery instead of facilitating it. Our results also suggest that the impact of price limits on volatility and price reversals, found in previous studies, are mainly due to the properties inherent to the futures returns, such as volatility clustering. Finally, although trading decreases significantly due to the price limits, traders do not seem to switch from the contracts affected by price limits to other maturities in order to minimize the impact of circuit breakers.     

Price discovery in the U.S. stock and stock options markets: A portfolio approach

Option prices vary with not only the underlying asset price, but also volatilities and higher moments. In this paper, we use a portfolio of options to seclude the value change of the portfolio from the impact of volatility and higher moments. We apply this portfolio approach to the price discovery analysis in the U.S. stock and stock options markets. We find that the price discovery on the directional movement of the stock price mainly occurs in the stock market, more so now than before as an increasing proportion of options market makers adopt automated quoting algorithms. Nevertheless, the options market becomes more informative during periods of significant options trading activities. The informativeness of the options quotes increases further when the options trading activity generates net sell or buy pressure on the underlying stock price, even more so when the pressure is consistent with deviations between the stock and the options market quotes. JEL Classification C52, G10, G13, G14     

The determinants of price discovery: Evidence from US-Canadian cross-listed shares

We examine the determinants of price discovery for Canadian firms cross-listed on the main US stock exchanges over the period 1996–2011. Sampling at a one-minute frequency, we compute Gonzalo and Granger Component Shares (CS) and employ a system GMM approach to control for persistence in price discovery and endogeneity between CS and its determinants. We find that price discovery is highly persistent and that there is strong evidence of simultaneity between CS and its determinants. We conclude that lower relative spreads and higher relative trading activity increase an exchange’s contribution to price discovery. We also document that it is small trades that drive price discovery, particularly since the introduction of decimalization.     

Understanding the market reaction to shockwaves: Evidence from the failure of Lehman Brothers

The spectacular failure of the 150-year-old investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15th, 2008 was a major turning point in the global financial crisis that broke out in the summer of 2007. Through the use of stock market data and credit default swap (CDS) spreads, this paper examines investors’ reaction to Lehman's collapse in an attempt to identify a spillover effect on the surviving financial institutions. The empirical analysis indicates that (i) the collateral damage was limited to the largest financial firms; (ii) the institutions most affected were the surviving “non-bank” financial services firms; and (iii) the negative effect was correlated with the financial conditions of the surviving institutions. We also detect significant abnormal jumps in CDS spreads that we interpret as evidence of sudden upward revisions in the market assessment of future default probabilities assigned to the surviving financial firms.     

International Price Discovery for Emerging Market Stocks: Evidence from Indian GDRs

Given the rapid increase of the number of emerging market stocks being dually listed abroad, it is important to understand the role of the foreign markets in the price discovery process. We examine this issue by studying the role of the London Global Depositary Receipts (GDR) market for Indian stocks. We find that the London and the Mumbai prices are cointegrated despite arbitrage restrictions imposed by Indian government regulations. Each market contributes almost equally to price discovery, a result in contrast to the small contribution of offshore markets to price discovery of stocks based in developed economies. The GDR market's contribution to price discovery increases with the foreign ownership of the firm and GDR issue size. We also find evidence of significant volatility spillovers from the London market to the Indian market. The overall results suggest that offshore trading in emerging market stocks play a beneficial role by aiding domestic price discovery.     

The impact of central clearing on counterparty risk,liquidity, and trading: Evidence from the credit default swap market

This paper examines the impact of central clearing on the credit default swap (CDS) market using a sample of voluntarily cleared single-name contracts. Consistent with central clearing reducing counterparty risk, CDS spreads increase around the commencement of central clearing and are lower than settlement spreads published by the central clearinghouse. Furthermore, the relation between CDS spreads and dealer credit risk weakens after central clearing begins, suggesting a lowering of systemic risk. These findings are robust to controls for frictions in both CDS and bond markets. Finally, matched sample analysis reveals that the increased post-trade transparency following central clearing is associated with an improvement in liquidity and trading activity.     

Financial liberalization and changes in the dynamic behaviour of emerging market volatility: Evidence from four Latin American equity markets

This paper examines whether the dynamic behaviour of stock market volatility for four Latin American stock markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and a mature stock market, that of the US, has changed during the last two decades. This period corresponds to years of significant financial and economic development in these emerging economies during which several financial crises have taken place. We use weekly data for the period January 1988 to July 2006 and we conduct our analysis in two parts. First, using the estimation of a Dynamic Conditional Correlation model we find that the short-term interdependencies between the Latin America stock markets and the developed stock market strengthened during the Asian, Latin American and Russian financial crises of 1997–1998. However, after the initial period of disturbance they eventually returned to almost their initial (relatively low) levels. Second, the estimation of a SWARCH-L model reveals the existence of more than one volatility regime and we detect a significant increased volatility during the period of crisis for all the markets under examination, although the capital flows liberalization process has only caused moderate shifts in volatility.     

Distance,Language, Religion,and the Law of One Price: Evidence from Canada and Nigeria

We examine the impact of physical distance, language, and religion on Law of One Price (LOP) deviations across interwar Canadian and modern Nigerian cities. The data comprise monthly average retail prices for narrowly defined goods collected by national statistical agencies. We find that differences in the fraction of the city population sharing a common language and religion have a significant impact on LOP deviations. The impact of language differences is consistent with a recently developed theory in which both trade costs and differences in signal–noise ratios contribute to LOP deviations.     

Performance and determinants of the Merton structural model: Evidence from hedging coefficients

We empirically test the effectiveness of the Merton (1974) model in measuring the sensitivity of corporate bond returns to changes in equity value. We study the main variables that affect the performance of the model and relax the assumption of normally distributed rates of return. Results show that less than 6% of the bonds have a hedge ratio within 10% from the model predicted value. Volatility, time to maturity, size, distress, liquidity and information quality are found to be significant determinants of the efficacy of the model.     

Realizing the volatility impacts of sovereign credit ratings information on equity and currency markets: Evidence from the Asian Financial Crisis

We examine the effects of different types of sovereign rating announcements on realized stock and currency market volatilities and cross-asset correlations around periods of financial crises. Using intraday market data and sovereign ratings data for nine sample countries in the Asia-Pacific region over 1997–2001, we find that currency and stock markets react somewhat heterogeneously to various rating announcements and that stock markets are more responsive to rating news than currency markets. We find new evidence that ratings events have significant and asymmetric impacts on intraday market data and that national market attributes influence rating impacts during financial crises.     

The dynamics of price discovery for cross-listed shares: Evidence from Australia and New Zealand

This paper studies the dynamics of price discovery for markets with bilateral cross-listings. Using a sample of four Australian stocks cross-listed in New Zealand and five New Zealand stocks cross-listed in Australia for the period January 2002 to December 2007, we assess Hasbrouck (1995) information shares and Grammig et al. (2005) conditional information shares over time. We observe that in both cases the home market is dominant in terms of price discovery. However, when studying price discovery over time, we find that the importance of the Australian market (the larger of the two markets) is increasing for both Australian and New Zealand domiciled firms. Finally, using panel regression analysis, we find that the growth in the importance of the Australian market is positively related to the growth in the size of the firm and negatively related to the size of the percentage spread in the Australian market, implying that as firms grow larger and their cost of trading in Australia declines, the Australian market becomes more informative.     

Asymmetric timely loss recognition,adverse shocks to external capital,and underinvestment: Evidence from the collapse of the junk bond market

Using the collapse of the junk bond market in the early 1990s as an exogenous shock to external capital, I document, in both difference-in-differences and triple difference designs, that speculative-grade firms that recognize economic losses in a timely manner experience a smaller reduction in investment following the collapse. The effect is more pronounced for speculative-grade firms with a low level of asset liquidation value. Using the excess bond premium as a proxy for fluctuations in the supply of capital, I also extend the generalizability of my findings to a broader sample of 84,421 firm-years over the 1972–2011 period.