This paper empirically analyzes the price discovery process between Korean sovereign CDS premium, spread of Korean government debt, Won-Dollar currency swap rate, and Won-Dollar FX rate. With the global financial and fiscal crisis, especially in the U.S. and Euro-zone, the interests in sovereign default risk have risen. Interests in CDS, an OTC credit derivative contract based on debt issuer’s default risk, also have increased.
A large number of presses have reported that CDS premium would be the best international market indicator for the default risk taken or transferred. However, internationally the CDS market liquidity has not been sufficient enough to validate its properties. Hence, based on empirics, this paper discusses whether Korean sovereign CDS premium can be considered as an appropriate indicator of sovereign credit risk in the Korean economy. Other largely accepted indices which contain the similar information about Korean economic fundamental and Korean external sovereign credit risk are also analyzed and compared: the spread of Korean government debt, Won-Dollar Currency Swap Rate, and Won-Dollar FX rate.
Our findings include: (a) in the price discovery process, Won-Dollar spot rate contributes to the price discovery especially most ‘during the financial crisis period’ and the ‘entire period’ (b) Within the period ‘after the financial crisis’, CDS premium and the other indices have mutual influences on the price discovery process higher than the period ‘before the financial crisis’ (c) while Won-Dollar forward rate shows the similar result with Won-Dollar spot rate, NDF rate and CDS premium make the largest mutual influence on price discovery in the period ‘before the financial crisis.’
An Empirical Study on Price Discovery among CDS Spread, Won/Dollar Spot and Futures Markets
