Stress testing credit risk: the Great Depression scenario

By employing Moody’s corporate default and rating transition data spanning the last 90 years we explore how much capital banks should hold against their corporate loan portfolios to withstand historical stress scenarios. Specifically, we will focus on the worst case scenario over the observation period, the Great Depression. We find that migration risk and the length of the investment horizon are critical factors when determining bank capital needs in a crisis. We show that capital may need to rise more than three times when the horizon is increased from 1 year, as required by current and future regulation, to 3 years. Increases are still important but of a lower magnitude when migration risk is introduced in the analysis. Further, we find that the new bank capital requirements under the so-called Basel 3 agreement would enable banks to absorb Great Depression-style losses. But, such losses would dent regulatory capital considerably and far beyond the capital buffers that have been proposed to ensure that banks survive crisis periods without government support.

Credit and liquidity components of corporate CDS spreads

This paper investigates the role of credit and liquidity factors in explaining corporate CDS price changes during normal and crisis periods. We find that liquidity risk is more important than firm-specific credit risk regardless of market conditions. Moreover, in the period prior to the recent “Great Recession” credit risk plays no role in explaining CDS price changes. The dominance of liquidity effects casts serious doubts on the relevance of CDS price changes as an indicator of default risk dynamics. Our results show how multiple liquidity factors including firm specific and aggregate liquidity proxies as well as an asymmetric information measure are critical determinants of CDS price variations. In particular, the impact of informed traders on the CDS price increases when markets are characterised by higher uncertainty, which supports concerns of insider trading during the crisis.

Poly-bagging predictors for classification modelling for credit scoring

Credit scoring modelling comprises one of the leading formal tools for supporting the granting of credit. Its core objective consists of the generation of a score by means of which potential clients can be listed in the order of the probability of default. A critical factor is whether a credit scoring model is accurate enough in order to provide correct classification of the client as a good or bad payer. In this context the concept of bootstraping aggregating (bagging) arises. The basic idea is to generate multiple classifiers by obtaining the predicted values from the fitted models to several replicated datasets and then combining them into a single predictive classification in order to improve the classification accuracy. In this paper we propose a new bagging-type variant procedure, which we call poly-bagging, consisting of combining predictors over a succession of resamplings. The study is derived by credit scoring modelling. The proposed poly-bagging procedure was applied to some different artificial datasets and to a real granting of credit dataset up to three successions of resamplings. We observed better classification accuracy for the two-bagged and the three-bagged models for all considered setups. These results lead to a strong indication that the poly-bagging approach may promote improvement on the modelling performance measures, while keeping a flexible and straightforward bagging-type structure easy to implement. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The credit spread dynamics of Latin American euro issues in international bond markets

This paper investigates two important relationships using the sovereign issues made by major Latin American economies in the international bond market: the determinants of credit spread changes using variables derived from structural and macroeconomic theory and the impact of a default episode on the underlying equilibrium dynamics. We find four significant determinants of credit spread changes: an asset and interest rate factor—consistent with structural models of credit spread pricing; the exchange rate—consistent with macroeconomic determinants and the slope of the yield curve—consistent with a business cycle effect. Also, an intra-regional analysis of sovereign yields reveals a shift in the long-run equilibrium dynamics around the Argentine default on the 23 December 2001.

Australian and US interest rate swap markets : comparison and linkages

We investigate and compare the determinants of US and Australian interest rate swap spreads and the linkages between these markets. The slope of the risk-free term structure is the most significant determinant and its importance is greater for longer terms to maturity. Interest rate levels and, in Australia, the default premium also have some impact. The influences of interest rate volatility, the liquidity premium and (in the USA) the default premium are small or negligible. We hypothesise, and our evidence confirms, that the US swap market significantly affects the Australian swap market but not vice-versa.

Modeling volatility and changes in the swap spread

We investigate the determinants of changes in U.S. interest rate swap spreads using a model that explicitly allows for volatility interactions between swaps of different terms to maturity. Changes in the swap spread are found to be positively related to interest rate volatility, to changes in the default risk premium in the corporate bond market, and to changes in the liquidity premium for government securities. Swap spread changes are negatively related to changes in the level of interest rates and changes in the slope of the term structure. We also find that there is a strong and significant volatility interaction among spreads for swaps of different maturities and that the process for the conditional variance of the spread is highly persistent across all maturities.

What determines the yen swap spread?

We investigate if Japanese yen denominated interest rate swap spreads price risks in addition to liquidity and default risk. These additional risks include: the time-varying correlation between interest rates of different types and maturities; business cycle risk; and market skewness risk. Our analysis, over a number of different maturities and sample periods, supports the existence of an additional risk premium. We also show that the time-varying correlation between short term market interest rates (e.g., TIBOR) and the longer term Government bond yield (e.g., Gensaki) is of particular importance. Japanese yen swap spreads are shown to contain both pro-cyclical and counter-cyclical elements of business cycle risk, positive risk premia for skewness risk and variable risk premia for correlation risk (between fixed and floating interest rates).

Essays on credit and bankruptcy law

This thesis is composed of four papers referent to the subject of Credit and Bankruptcy Law. In each essay - that corresponds to one chapter - we aim at analyzing the ináuence of default on credit market, considering di§erent legal situations.

Avaliação do risco de crédito: aplicação do modelo KMV para obter a probabilidade de default no setor siderúrgico

Credit risk management has assumed increasing importance for the managers and directors of enterprises. Thus, different approaches aimed to measure the probability of default are under discussion nowadays. This paper evaluates models that have become more popular over the last 30 years in order forecast defaults or to provide information regarding to financial difficulties of enterprises. This paper will focus on the KMV model in order to estimate the probability of default, its methodology based on market value of the asset and its volatility and finally estimate the probability of default. Finally, to test the KMV model will be used a sample of global steel companies that have credit in Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), which will allow us to make comparisons with the models presented in this work.

Default mercado de crédito parcelado para bens duráveis : veículos automotores

The present work aims to study the macroeconomic factors influence in credit risk for installment autoloans operations. The study is based on 4.887 credit operations surveyed in the Credit Risk Information System (SCR) hold by the Brazilian Central Bank. Using Survival Analysis applied to interval censured data, we achieved a model to estimate the hazard function and we propose a method for calculating the probability of default in a twelve month period. Our results indicate a strong time dependence for the hazard function by a polynomial approximation in all estimated models. The model with the best Akaike Information Criteria estimate a positive effect of 0,07% for males over de basic hazard function, and 0,011% for the increasing of ten base points on the operation annual interest rate, toward, for each R$ 1.000,00 on the installment, the hazard function suffer a negative effect of 0,28% , and an estimated elevation of 0,0069% for the same amount added to operation contracted value. For de macroeconomics factors, we find statistically significant effects for the unemployment rate (-0,12%) , for the one lag of the unemployment rate (0,12%), for the first difference of the industrial product index(-0,008%), for one lag of inflation rate (-0,13%) and for the exchange rate (-0,23%). We do not find statistic significant results for all other tested variables.

Modelos de equilíbrio geral dinâmico com custo de default

Neste trabalho fazemos um resumo de alguns artigos que tratam de equilíbrio geral dinâmico com custos de default. Focamos no estudo dos modelos de Kehoe e Levine (1993) e de Alvarez e Jermann (2000). Também descrevemos algumas adaptações do modelo de Alvarez e Jermann, como os trabalhos de Hellwig e Lorenzoni (2009) e de Azariadis e Kaas (2008), e comparamos os resultados desses modelos com os de Huggett (1993), no qual os mercados são exogenamente incompletos. Finalmente, expomos uma falha no algoritmo computacional sugerido por Krueger e Perry (2010) para se computar os equilíbrios estacionários de economias como as de Alvarez e Jermann (2000).

Financial disruption as a cost of sovereign default

This dissertation analyses quantitatively the costs of sovereign default for the economy, in a model where banks with long positions in government debt play a central role in the financial intermediation for private sector's investments and face financial frictions that limit their leverage ability. Calibration tries to resemble some features of the Eurozone, where discussions about bailout schemes and default risk have been central issues. Results show that the model captures one important cost of default pointed out by empirical and theoretical literature on debt crises, namely the fall in investment that follows haircut episodes, what can be explained by a worsening in banks' balance sheet conditions that limits credit for the private sector and raises their funding costs. The cost in terms of output decrease is though not significant enough to justify the existence of debt markets and the government incentives for debt repayment. Assuming that the government is able to alleviate its constrained budget by imposing a restructuring on debt repayment profile that allows it to cut taxes, our model generates an important difference for output path comparing lump-sum taxes and distortionary. For our calibration, quantitative results show that in terms of output and utility, it is possible that the effect on the labour supply response generated by tax cuts dominates investment drop caused by credit crunch on financial markets. We however abstract from default costs associated to the breaking of existing contracts, external sanctions and risk spillovers between countries, that might also be relevant in addition to financial disruption effects. Besides, there exist considerable trade-offs for short and long run path of economic variables related to government and banks' behaviour.

Information asymmetry and competition in credit markets: the pricing of overdraft loans in Brazil

This paper evaluates how information asymmetry affects the strength of competition in credit markets. A theory is presented in which adverse selection softens competition by decreasing the incentives creditors have for competing in the interest rate dimension. In equilibirum, although creditors compete, the outcome is similar to collusion. Three empirical implications arise. First, interest rate should respond asymmetrically to changes in the cost of funds: increases in cost of funds should, on average, have a larger effect on interest rates than decreases. Second, aggressiveness in pricing should be associated with a worseing in the bank level default rates. Third, bank level default rates should be endogenous. We then verify the validity of these three empirical implications using Brazilian data on consumer overdraft loans. The results in this paper rationalize seemingly abnormallly high interest rates in unsecured loans.