Default Recovery Rates in Credit Risk Modelling: A Review of the Literature and Empirical Evidence

Evidence from many countries in recent years suggests that collateral values and recovery rates (RRs) on corporate defaults can be volatile and, moreover, that they tend to go down just when the number of defaults goes up in economic downturns. This link between RRs and default rates has traditionally been neglected by credit risk models, as most of them focused on default risk and adopted static loss assumptions, treating the RR either as a constant parameter or as a stochastic variable independent from the probability of default (PD). This traditional focus on default analysis has been partly reversed by the recent significant increase in the number of studies dedicated to the subject of recovery‐rate estimation and the relationship between default and RRs. This paper presents a detailed review of the way credit risk models, developed during the last 30 years, treat the RR and, more specifically, its relationship with the PD of an obligor. Recent empirical evidence concerning this issue is also presented and discussed.
(J.E.L.: G15, G21, G28).     

Persistent gaps and default traps

We show how vicious circles in countries' credit histories arise in a model where output persistence is coupled with asymmetric information about output shocks. In such an environment, default signals the borrower's vulnerability to adverse shocks and creates a pessimistic growth outlook. This translates into higher interest spreads and debt servicing costs relative to income, raising the cost of future repayments, thereby creating “default traps”. We build a long and broad cross-country dataset to show the existence of a history-dependent “default premium” and of significant effects of output persistence on sovereign creditworthiness, consistent with the model's predictions.     

Forecasting Chinese Corporate Bond Defaults: Comparative Study of Market- vs. Accounting-Based Models

This paper provides the first empirical study on bond defaults in the Chinese market. It overcomes the deficiencies of existing methods, which suffer from lack of actual default data for back testing. With newly available bond default data, we analyze the roles of market variables against accounting variables under various models. While we find that Merton’s market-based structural model and KMV’s Distance to Default exhibit languid discriminating power compared with hazard models that have carefully constructed predictors, other market variables carry significant information about bond defaults and could help improve on models with only the accounting variables. This implies that the collective intelligence of the market could somehow mitigate the distortion caused by misreported accounting information. Further, model performance can be significantly improved by adding predicting variables that link an individual financial measure to the broader market performance, such as the relative margin—a business environment proxy introduced in this study. We not only shed light on the default behavior of the Chinese bond market, but also provide a promising approach to improve the variable selection process.     

Intersectoral default contagion: A multivariate Poisson autoregression analysis

This paper analyzes credit rating default dependencies in a multisectoral framework. Using Mergent's FISD database, we study the default series in the U.S. over the last two decades, disaggregating defaults by industry-sector group. During this period, two main waves of default occurred: the implosion of the “dot-com” bubble and the global financial crisis. We estimate a Multivariate Autoregressive Conditional Poisson model according to the biweekly number of defaults that occurred in different sectors of the economy from 1996 to 2015. We discuss the contagion effect between sectors in two ways: the degree of transmission of the probability of default from one sector to another, i.e., the “infectivity” of the sector, and the degree of contagion of one sector from another, i.e., the “vulnerability” of the sector. Our results show differences between the sectors' relations during the first and second part of our sample. We add some exogenous variables to the analysis and evaluate their contribution to the goodness of fit.     

Default options and training participation

This article analyzes whether defaults affect the choice for courses followed at work. In addition, we analyze whether the size of the default effect varies with employees’ personality and skill-deficiencies. We perform an experiment in which workers are hypothetically offered three courses which they can accept or exchange for other courses. Randomizing the default package of courses, we identify the default effect. Default courses are chosen approximately three times more often than other courses. They are chosen more often if people have skill-deficiencies in these courses, suggesting that people consider the default to be an advice. Women choose default courses more often than men. Women with less self-confidence and men with lower cognitive skills choose the default courses more often.     

金融周期、全要素生产率与债券违约

基于宏微观结合的视角,本文首先从理论上阐释了金融周期和全要素生产率影响债券违约的机制,并基于我国A股非金融类上市公司发行的债券,进而实证检验了金融周期和全要素生产率对债券违约的影响。研究发现,金融周期和全要素生产率显著影响了债券违约发生概率,在金融周期顶部区域债券违约概率显著增加,全要素生产率越高的企业发生债券违约的概率越小。进一步的异质性分析表明,金融周期对周期性行业企业和非国有企业债券违约具有更高的平均边际影响。本文的政策启示为:要平衡好稳增长和防风险之间的关系,避免采取过度的经济刺激政策,在金融周期顶部期要采取以时间换空间的稳杠杆政策;要确保减税降费政策措施落地生根,加大对科技研发特别是基础研究平台的支持力度,促进企业提高全要素生产率。     

Bank Mergers, Information, Default and the Price of Credit

This paper addresses the impact of bank mergers on the price of firm credit, through an information channel. It is shown that, as bank mergers imply a wider spreading of information among banks concerning firms' past defaults, they may increase the expected revenue from lending. Therefore, interest rates may decline as long as a sufficiently competitive environment is preserved. A fall in interest rates, in turn, reduces the incentives for firms to strategically default, which reinforces the downward effect on the price of credit. The results are a function of the level of information sharing and of the sensitivity of the default probability to the interest rate .     

The perils of debt deflation in the Euro area: a multi regime model

Academic research and policy makers in the Euro area are currently concerned with the threat of debt deflation and secular stagnation in Europe. Empirical evidence seems to suggest that secular stagnation and debt deflation in the Euro area may be rather slowly developing. Yet what appears as major peril is that debt deflation with a lack of economic growth, rising real interest rates and further rising debt may trigger household defaults, defaults of firms and banks, rise of risk premia, and default risk of certain sectors of the economy or sovereign defaults. It is this rising default and financial risk that may lead to a regime change to a slowly moving debt crisis with high financial risk and high financial stress. In order to explore those issues, a macro policy model of Svensson type is introduced, exhibiting a regime of low and high financial stress. Then, a four dimensional multi-regime VAR is employed to an Euro area data set to support the theoretical model and the claim that in particular Southern Euro area countries are affected by debt deflation and financial market stress.     

Optimal pension plan default policies when employees are biased

What is the optimal default contribution rate or default asset allocation in pension plans? Could active decision (i.e., not setting a default and forcing employees to make a decision) be optimal? These questions are studied in a model in which each employee is biased regarding her optimal contribution rate or asset allocation. In this model, active decision is never optimal and the optimal default is, depending on parameter values, one of three defaults. The paper explores how the parameters affect the average loss in the population at the optimal default.     

Default correlation: rating,industry ripple effect,and business cycle

For a well-diversified bond portfolio, default risk over the investment horizon is known as the major risk and the risk is largely from correlated defaults. While plenty of theoretical work about default correlation has been developed, empirical studies on default correlation have not made much progress in the past two decades. In this paper, we fill this void in the literature by thoroughly investigating how default correlation changes across different bond ratings, over different time horizons, and across different industries over the sample period of 1970 to 2014. In particular, we examine how rating-based default correlations change before, during, and after recessions. More importantly, we reveal the ‘industry ripple effect’ that default correlations are low within upstream industries but become higher within downstream industries along the structure of the supply chain. Also, default correlations are relatively high between upstream industries and downstream industries.     

Sovereign defaulters: Do international capital markets punish them?

We empirically study whether countries that default on their debt experience a reduction in their capital inflows, as suggested by the literature. Our data contain information on (i) the defaulter countries and their creditors and (ii) bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. With these we can study how FDI flows are affected by sovereign default by distinguishing between those flows coming from defaulters' creditor countries and others. According to our estimations, this distinction is crucial since the decline of FDI in flows after default is markedly concentrated on those flows originating in defaulters' creditor countries. The decay in FDI flows is higher in the years closer to the default date and for countries that have defaulted more times. We do not find evidence that countries shut their doors to defaulters' investment abroad, which is also a cost of default suggested in the literature.     

Global banking and international business cycles

This paper incorporates a global bank into a two-country business cycle model. The bank collects deposits from households and makes loans to entrepreneurs, in both countries. It has to finance a fraction of loans using equity. We investigate how such a bank capital requirement affects the international transmission of productivity and loan default shocks. Three findings emerge. First, the bank's capital requirement has little effect on the international transmission of productivity shocks. Second, the contribution of loan default shocks to business cycle fluctuations is negligible under normal economic conditions. Third, an exceptionally large loan loss originating in one country induces a sizeable and simultaneous decline in economic activity in both countries. This is particularly noteworthy, as the 2007–09 global financial crisis was characterized by large credit losses in the US and a simultaneous sharp output reduction in the US and the Euro Area. Our results thus suggest that global banks may have played an important role in the international transmission of the crisis.     

Sovereign default: Which shocks matter?

This paper analyses a small open economy that wants to borrow from abroad, cannot commit to repay debt but faces costs if it decides to default. The model generates analytical expressions for the impact of shocks on the incentive compatible level of debt. Debt reduction generated by severe output shocks is no more than a couple of percentage points. In contrast, shocks to world interest rates can substantially affect the incentive compatible level of debt.     

How Information Quality of Macro Aggregates Affects Sovereign Risk: An Empirical Investigation

This paper looks at the relationship between data quality of macro aggregates and the repayment ratio for debt payments due in a given year after a country defaults. We find empirical evidence that good information of macro aggregates reduces sovereign risk by enhancing the repayment ratio conditional on default, while having an insignificant effect on the default probability. The estimation accounts for selection bias by using a cross-country panel data of 69 developing countries for 1989–2002. Careful consideration is taken to establish information quality of macro aggregates as an exogenous institutional variable. Results are robust to controlling for various governance factors, income levels, and regional factors, etc. Linking information quality to creditors' bargaining power is more consistent with our findings than linking poor information quality to information asymmetry.     

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.     

个人住房抵押贷款违约风险影响因素实证研究-以杭州市为例

随着银行个人住房抵押贷款余额的快速上升,个人住房抵押贷款违约风险日益成为人们关注和研究的焦点.该文应用杭州市某国有商业银行信贷数据,采用LOGISTIC模型实证研究发现影响当前个人住房抵押贷款的违约因素按重要性排序依次为:是否为当地人、贷款价值比、期房还是现房、月还款额占家庭月收入的比例、还款方式、家庭收入和建筑面积.该文进一步应用不完全合同理论解释了结论背后的制度含义,并提出了相应的治理措施.     

Evaluating borrower’s default risk in peer-to-peer lending: evidence from a lending platform in China

Recent years have witnessed the popularity of online peer-to-peer lending, which allows individuals to borrow from and lend to each other on an Internet-based platform. Using data from a large P2P platform in China, this article explores the factors that determine the default risk based on the demographic characteristics of borrowers. Moreover, we propose a credit risk evaluation model, which can quantify the default risk of each P2P loan. Empirical results reveal that gender, age, marital status, educational level, working years, company size, monthly payment, loan amount, debt to income ratio and delinquency history play a significant role in loan defaults. Finally, we analyse the relationship between default risk and these contributory variables, and the possible causes are also discussed in this study.     

Bilateral counterparty risk valuation for credit default swap in a contagion model using Markov chain

The computation of the bilateral counterparty valuation adjustment for a credit default swap (CDS) contract is in effect the modeling of the default dependence among the investor, the protection seller, and the reference entity. We present a contagion model, where defaults of three parties are all driven by a common continuous-time Markov chain describing the macroeconomic conditions. We give the explicit formula for the bilateral credit valuation adjustment (CVA) of CDS and examine the effect of the regime switching on the CVA.     

Fiscal limits and monetary policy: default vs. inflation

This paper studies the monetary policy trade-off between low inflation and low sovereign risk in the environment where fiscal authorities fail to fully ensure the sustainability of government debt. Building on the Fiscal Theory of Price Level (FTPL) and the Fiscal Theory of Sovereign Risk (FTSR), this paper differs in its baseline assumption about the monetary policy objective, which is neither to rule out defaults regardless of inflation costs (as in FTPL), nor to follow inflation targeting regardless of associated sovereign risk (as in FTSR). Instead, we study the case in which the central bank controls the risky interest rate to minimize the probability of default while ruling out large inflation hikes. We show that this policy regime can mitigate default risks only when the central bank is expected to allow sufficient increases in inflation. When agents believe that the central bank's tolerance toward inflation hikes has increased, equilibrium risk premium goes down, suggesting that information concerning changes in the central bank's preferences over inflation directly impacts default risks.     

从功能对等角度谈文化缺省及其翻译补偿

翻译既是语言之间的转换,更是文化之间的交流。文化缺省给翻译带来了很大挑战。功能对等理论能够很好地解释对文化缺省进行翻译补偿的可能性,并可作为翻译补偿的原则。