The Role of CDS Market in the Price Discovery Process of the “PIIGS” Countries Sovereign Credit Risk During the Recent Decade of Monetary Easing

The aim of this paper is to analyze the long-lasting dynamic relationship between the credit default swap (CDS) premia and the government bond spreads (GBS), with regard to the sovereign credit risk. The practical focus is to evaluate whether the CDS market effectively is the leading or the lagging market in the credit risk price discovery process during the last decade of monetary easing. The analysis extends to all “sensitive” countries in the Eurozone, the so-called “PIIGS” countries (excluded Greece) for the interval 2007-2017. JEL classification numbers: G01, G12, G14, G20. Keywords: CDS spread, Government bond spread, Sovereign credit risk, Cointegration, Vector error correction model, Granger-causality.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the US Credit Default Swap Market

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the US economy at different levels. Since credit default swaps can be viewed as a default probability indicator, the article shows the credit default swap market perspective on how the US economy was hit by the pandemic. Forecasting models are built to estimate the predictability of the CDS market sectors during the pandemic, i.e., manufacturing, energy, banks, consumer goods, and services and financial sector excluding banks. Econometric tests are applied to check the uniqueness of credit default swap market sectors after the declaration of the pandemic. The results indicate that the financial sector excluding banks performed uniquely during the pandemic; i.e., the predictability of this sector dropped significantly, and the Chow breakpoint test and Wald coefficient test can identify the shift in the data after declaration of the pandemic.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Robustness of the Probability of Default Estimation Model

Probability of default (PD) estimation is essential to the calculation of expected credit loss under the Basel III framework and the International Financial Reporting Standard 9. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been adopted as a key determinant in PD estimation models. However, PD models with a GDP covariate may not perform well under aberrant (i.e., outlier) conditions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored the robustness of a PD model with a GDP determinant (the test model) in comparison with that of a PD model with a credit default swap index (CDX) determinant (the alternative model). The test model had a significantly greater ratio of increase in Akaike information criterion than the alternative model in comparisons of the fit performance of models including 2020 data with that of models excluding 2020 data (i.e., that do not cover the COVID-19 pandemic). Furthermore, the Cook’s distance of the 2020 data of the test model was significantly greater than that of the alternative model. Therefore, the test model exhibited a serious robustness issue in outlier scenarios, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the alternative model was more robust. This finding opens the prospect for the CDX to potentially serve as an alternative to GDP in PD estimation models.

Credit Shock Propagation Along Supply Chains: Evidence from the CDS Market

Using a panel of credit default swap (CDS) spreads and supply chain links, we observe that both favorable and unfavorable credit shocks propagate through supply chains in the CDS market. Particularly, the three-day cumulative abnormal CDS spread change (CASC) is 63 basis points for firms whose customers experienced a CDS up-jump event (an adverse credit shock). The value is 74 basis points if their suppliers experienced a CDS up-jump event. The corresponding three-day CASC values are –36 and –38 basis points, respectively, for firms whose customers and suppliers, respectively, experienced an extreme CDS down-jump event (a favorable credit shock). These effects are approximately twice as large for adverse credit shocks originating from natural disasters. Credit shock propagation is absent in inactive supply chains and is amplified if supply chain partners are followed by the same analysts. Industry competition and financial linkages between supply chain partners, such as trade credit and large sales exposure, amplify the shock propagation along supply chains. Strong shock propagation persists through second and third supply chain tiers for adverse shocks but attenuates for favorable shocks. This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance.

The Perception of Risk Disclosure Characteristics on the Credit Default Swap Market - An Automated Analysis

This paper evaluates the associations between credit default swap (CDS) spreads and risk disclosure characteristics, especially the expected qualitative and the expected quantitative impacts of risks on companies' future performance and information on risk management. We find that CDS investors can benefit from information on expected risk impacts and from information on risk management, which is important for the current discussion of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on risk disclosure regulation. However, for companies, the disclosure of such information can be either beneficial or costly, depending on the initial risk perception of CDS investors prior to the publication of risk disclosures and on the disclosed risk factors. Furthermore, we expand the literature by automatically measuring the mentioned risk disclosure characteristics using dictionary-based approaches.