We study how local governments’ debt financing decisions relate to the term structure of interest rates. Using a community welfare maximization framework, we derive the link between interest rates and the adjustable-rate share of borrowing by local governments. We construct a novel database of...

We study how local governments’ debt financing decisions relate to the term structure of interest rates. Using a novel database of loans taken out by local governments in England, we find that the yield spread is the main determinant of the local governments’ adjustable-rate loan share. Our...

We examine whether CDS contracts written on individual banks are effective leading indicators of bank financial distress during a period of systemic bank crisis. Changes in CDS spreads are found to yield a robust signal of failure across a set of European and US banks, in keeping with indirect...

We show how multivariate GARCH models can be used to generate a time-varying “information share” (Hasbrouck, 1995) to represent the changing patterns of price discovery in closely related securities. By focusing on credit spreads obtained from different markets, we also find that a...

This paper investigates the forecasting performance for CDS spreads of both linear and nonlinear models by analysing the iTraxx Europe index during the financial crisis period which began in mid-2007. The statistical and economic significance of the models' forecasts are evaluated by employing...

In this paper we investigate the price discovery process in single-name credit spreads obtained from bond, credit default swap (CDS), equity and equity option prices. We analyse short term price discovery by modelling daily changes in credit spreads in the four markets with a vector...

We show that the dividend growth rate implied by the options market is informative about (i) the expected dividend growth rate and (ii) the expected dividend risk premium. We model the expected dividend risk premium and explore its implications for the predictability of dividend growth and stock...

We find that managers receive more risk-taking incentives in their compensation packages once their firms are referenced by credit default swap (CDS) trading, particularly when institutional ownership is high and when firms are in financial distress. These findings provide suggestive evidence...

We introduce a novel methodology to hedge changes in the market values of credit exposures using equity put options. Our new hedge ratios are derived from the application of contingent-claims valuation and are fundamentally different from existing hedging methods aimed at neutralizing the loss...