In this paper, I show that Polleit and Mariano (2011) are right in concluding that Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are per se unobjectionable from Rothbard's libertarian perspective on property rights and contract theory, but that they fail to derive this conclusion properly. I therefore outline the...

Using a new dataset of bid and offer quotes for credit default swaps, we investigate the relationship between theoretical determinants of default risk and actual market premia using cross sectional regressions. These theoretical determinants are variance risk premia, implied volatility and the...