Through a long-period analysis of the inter-temporal relations between the French markets for credit default swaps (CDS), shares and bonds between 2001 and 2008, this article shows how a financial innovation like CDS could heighten financial instability. After describing the operating principles...

Results from portfolio models for credit risk tell us that loan concentration in certain industry sectors can substantially increase the value-at-risk (VaR). The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether a tractable "infection model" can provide a meaningful estimate of the impact of...