A truly global crisis? Evidence from contagion dependence across international REIT markets

This study examines the global nature of the recent crisis under bivariate Markov-switching models for pre- and post-crisis periods using the breakpoint of August 9, 2007. It quantifies international synchronization of boom-bust regime switches to investigate contagion-type dynamic comovements of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Global REIT markets display persistent bust regimes from September 2008 to May 2009, whereas the regime-switching patterns are not significant in the pre-crisis period. The results provide new evidence for global REIT contagion phenomena and suggest greater difficulties in diversifying risks across global REIT markets during the post-crisis period.     

Contagion or Competition: Going Concern Audit Opinions for Real Estate Firms

We examine whether intra–industry information transfers from going–concern audit opinion announcements create contagion or competitive stock price reactions for other real estate firms operating in the same line of business. Using returns from publicly-traded land subdivision/development firms and Real Estate Investment Trusts, we find modest evidence supporting a competitive effect among rival firms as a result of another real estate firm announcing the receipt of a Going Concern Opinion (GCO) from its independent auditors.     

A multilateral approach to examining the comovements among major world equity markets

This study investigates the comovement in stock indices among major developed markets, where Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices are employed for the purposes of the study. We employ a model that accommodates multilateral international impacts on equity index movements. The empirical results reveal the existence of significant international transmission effects among these major world markets, both in terms of returns and volatility, and mostly in a positive direction. The U.S. market, as expected, is the leading market in the sense that it has the most pervasive and significant impact on all markets across continents. However, the U.S. market exhibits a different relationship with European markets from that with Asia-Pacific markets. The evidence also suggests that strong regional transmission effects exist. A further investigation using the extended model reveals that the linkages between U.S. and European markets are driven by positive global common forces and by negative international competitive effects. On the other hand, the U.S. and Asian markets are linked through positive global common forces and positive international contagion effects. The United States, Canada, and the U.K. are the three markets that still demonstrate contagion influence over countries outside its own region. The Asia-Pacific markets are more susceptible to contagion effects. Finally, it is interesting to find that Japanese market performance became more contagious toward other markets during the Asian financial crisis period.     

寿险公司的业务同质化与风险联动性

单家机构之间的业务趋同是否是金融业系统性风险的一个来源？近些年中国单家寿险公司的产品分布和地理分布均更加分散,但是公司之间的产品分布和地理分布均有“同质化”趋势,且公司之间在赔付风险、投资风险和破产风险上的联动性均提高。对此,本文分析了寿险公司业务同质化引起风险联动性的机理,探讨了几种可能的效应。基于公司配对样本,并从时间上和地理上引入工具变量处理业务同质度的内生性,发现:(1)当两家寿险公司的产品分布从完全差别到完全相同时,它们的投资风险联动性和破产风险联动性均将提高十几个百分点;(2)产品同质度对赔付风险联动性没有显著影响;(3)地理同质化对3种风险联动性均没有显著影响。     

Dynamical macroprudential stress testing using network theory

The increasing frequency and scope of financial crises have made global financial stability one of the major concerns of economic policy and decision makers. This has led to the understanding that financial and banking supervision has to be thought of as a systemic task, focusing on the interdependent relations among the institutions. Using network theory, we develop a dynamic model that uses a bipartite network of banks and their assets to analyze the system’s sensitivity to external shocks in individual asset classes and to evaluate the presence of features underlying the system that could lead to contagion. As a case study, we apply the model to stress test the Venezuelan banking system from 1998 to 2013. The introduced model was able to capture monthly changes in the structure of the system and the sensitivity of bank portfolios to different external shock scenarios and to identify systemic vulnerabilities and their time evolution. The model provides new tools for policy makers and supervision agencies to use for macroprudential dynamical stress testing.     

Contagion risk in the interbank market: a probabilistic approach to cope with incomplete structural information

One lesson of the financial crisis erupting in 2008 has been that domino effects constitute a serious threat to the stability of the financial sector, i.e. the failure of one node in the interbank network might entail the danger of contagion to large parts of the entire system. How important this effect is, depends on the exact topology of the network on which the supervisory authorities have typically very incomplete knowledge. In order to explore the extent of contagion effects and to analyse the effectiveness of macroprudential measures to contain such effects, a reconstruction of the quantitative features of the empirical network would be needed. We propose a probabilistic approach to such a reconstruction: we propose to combine some important known quantities (like the size of the banks) with a realistic stochastic representation of the remaining structural elements. Our approach allows us to evaluate relevant measures for the contagion risk after default of one unit (i.e. the number of expected subsequent defaults, or their probabilities). For some quantities we are able to derive closed form solutions, others can be obtained via computational mean-field approximations.     

Contagion effects and risk transmission channels in the housing,stock, interest rate and currency markets: An Empirical Study in China and the U.S.

This paper aims to investigate the crisis linkage and transmission channels within the housing, stock, interest rate and the currency markets in the U.S. and China in the past decade since the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Two hybrid models, namely the SWARCH-EVT-Copula and the Bivariate SWARCH-EVT models, are proposed and applied in order to take into account (A) the high/low volatility regimes, (B) the interdependence structure inherited from the joint tail behaviours, as well as, (C) the risk spillover dynamics among financial sectors during market turmoils. We empirically show that the housing and stock markets share the strongest linkage and play central roles in the spreading of shocks. With a highly integrated system, the American financial sectors are under greater exposure to risk contagion and systemic risk during crises than the Chinese markets. Nevertheless, the exchange rate risk of Renminbi remains at an intensive level since its “crawl-like arrangement” and leads to increasing co-movements in the stock and interest rate markets since 2014.     

Exchange rate contagion in Latin America

A regular vine copula approach is implemented for testing for contagion among the exchange rates of the six largest Latin American countries. Using daily data from June 2005 through April 2012, we find evidence of contagion among the Brazilian, Chilean, Colombian and Mexican exchange rates. However, there are interesting differences in contagion during periods of large exchange rate depreciation and appreciation. Our results have important implications for the response of Latin American countries to currency crises originated abroad.