Three Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 led to extraordinary government intervention in firms and markets. The scope and depth of government action rivaled that of the Great Depression. Many traded markets experienced dramatic declines in liquidity leading to the existence of conditions normally assumed to be promptly removed via the actions of profit seeking arbitrageurs. These extreme events motivate the three essays in this work. The first essay seeks and fails to find evidence of investor behavior consistent with the broad 'Too Big To Fail' policies enacted during the crisis by government agents. Only in limited circumstances, where government guarantees such as deposit insurance or U.S. Treasury lending lines already existed, did investors impart a premium to the debt security prices of firms under stress. The second essay introduces the Inflation Indexed Swap Basis (IIS Basis) in examining the large differences between cash and derivative markets based upon future U.S. inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It reports the consistent positive value of this measure as well as the very large positive values it reached in the fourth quarter of 2008 after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. It concludes that the IIS Basis continues to exist due to limitations in market liquidity and hedging alternatives. The third essay explores the methodology of performing debt based event studies utilizing credit default swaps (CDS). It provides practical implementation advice to researchers to address limited source data and/or small target firm sample size.

Low-frequency volatility of yen interest rate swap market in relation to macroeconomic risk

Using ‘low-frequency’ volatility extracted from aggregate volatility shocks in interest rate swap (hereafter, IRS) market, this paper investigates whether Japanese yen IRS volatility can be explained by macroeconomic risks. The analysis suggests that this low-frequency yen IRS volatility has strong and positive association with most of the macroeconomic risk proxies (e.g., volatility of consumer price index, industrial production volatility, foreign exchange volatility, slope of the term structure and money supply) with the exception of the unemployment rate, which is negatively related to IRS volatility. This finding is fairly consistent with the argument that the greater the macroeconomic risk the greater is the use of derivative instruments to hedge or speculate. The relationship between the macroeconomic risks and IRS volatility varies slightly across the different swap maturities but is robust to alternative volatility specifications. This linkage between swap market and macroeconomy has practical implications since market makers and hedgers use the swap rate as benchmark for pricing long-term interest rates, corporate bonds and various other securities.

Can the choice of interpolation method explain the difference between swap prices and futures prices?

The standard model linking the swap rate to the rates in a contemporaneous strip of futures interest rate contracts typically produces biased estimates of the swap rate. Institutional differences usually require some form of interpolation to be employed and may in principle explain this empirical result. Using Australian data, we find evidence consistent with this explanation and show that model performance is greatly improved if an alternative interpolation method is used. In doing so, we also provide the first published Australian evidence on the accuracy of the futures-based approach to pricing interest rate swaps.

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.

The Libor Market Model: from theory to calibration

This thesis is focused on the financial model for interest rates called the LIBOR Market Model. In the appendixes, we provide the necessary mathematical theory. In the inner chapters, firstly, we define the main interest rates and financial instruments concerning with the interest rate models, then, we set the LIBOR market model, demonstrate its existence, derive the dynamics of forward LIBOR rates and justify the pricing of caps according to the Black’s formula. Then, we also present the Swap Market Model, which models the forward swap rates instead of the LIBOR ones. Even this model is justified by a theoretical demonstration and the resulting formula to price the swaptions coincides with the Black’s one. However, the two models are not compatible from a theoretical point. Therefore, we derive various analytical approximating formulae to price the swaptions in the LIBOR market model and we explain how to perform a Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, we present the calibration of the LIBOR market model to the markets of both caps and swaptions, together with various examples of application to the historical correlation matrix and the cascade calibration of the forward volatilities to the matrix of implied swaption volatilities provided by the market.

An empirical analysis of the Australian dollar swap spreads

This paper examines the relationship between the Australian dollar interest rate swap spread and the term structure of the interest rates, and also the determinants of interest rate swap spreads. For this purpose, we estimate the term structure of interest rates using the parsimonious fitting function of Nelson and Siegel [Journal of Business 60 (1987) 476] for the Australian government bonds and Australian interest rate swaps for certain maturities that are not available. We analyse the swap spread over the term structure of the government bonds and how changes in swap determinants affect the changes in swap spreads. The sample period covers the daily interval from 6 December 1996 to 31 December 1999.

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).

A "swap" como instrumento de redução de custos e riscos em transações financeiras

Tem como objetivo estudar várias estruturas básicas das transações de permuta, batizadas genericamente, no exterior, como "SWAP" e mais um número das suas variações mais comuns. Caracterizar a aplicação, a mecãnica e as vantagens das permutas feitas: internamente num mesmo país (interest rate swap); entre empresas de diferentes origens e ou suas subsidiárias através do câmbio de capitais em moedas diferentes (swaps). Apresentar um material que, tratando o assunto ao nível de detalhes, possa servir para discussão e desenvolvimento des sa modalidade entre acadêmicos e demais interessados em assun tos do ramo de finanças.

A dinâmica da taxa de câmbio no Brasil face às operações swap (2002-2015)

This dissertation investigates, based on the Post-Keynesian theory and on its concept of monetary economy of production, the exchange rate behavior of the Brazilian Real in the presence of Brazilian Central Bank's interventions by means of the so-called swap transactions over 2002-2015. Initially, the work analyzes the essential properties of an open monetary economy of production and, thereafter, it presents the basic propositions of the Post-Keynesian view on the exchange rate determination, highlighting the properties of foreign exchange markets and the peculiarities of the Brazilian position into the international monetary and financial system. The research, thereby, accounts for the various segments of the Brazilian foreign exchange market. To accomplish its purpose, we first do a literature review of the Post-Keynesian literature about the topic. Then, we undertake empirical exams of the exchange rate determination using two statistical methods. On the one hand, to measure the volatility of exchange rate, we estimate Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (ARCH) and Generalized Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) models. On the other hand, to measure the variance of the exchange rate in relation to real, financial variables, and the swaps, we estimate a Vector Auto-regression (VAR) model. Both experiments are performed for the nominal and real effective exchange rates. The results show that the swaps respond to exchange rate movements, trying to offset its volatility. This reveals that the exchange rate is, at least in a certain magnitude, sensitive to swaps transactions conducted by the Central Bank. In addition, another empirical result is that the real effective exchange rate responds more to the swaps auctions than the nominal rate.