The rapid growth of the credit default swap (CDS) market and the increased number of defaults in recent years have led to major changes in the way CDS contracts are settled when default occurs. Auctions are increasingly the mechanism used to settle these contracts, replacing physical transfers...

This paper studies the connection between risk taking and executive compensation in financial institutions. A theoretical model of shareholders, debtholders, depositors, and an executive suggests that 1) in principle, excessive risk taking (in the form of risk shifting) may be addressed by...

Are companies with traded credit default swap (CDS) positions on their debt more likely to default? Using a proportional hazard model of bankruptcy and Merton's contingent claims approach, we estimate the probability of default for US nonfinancial firms. Our analysis does not generally find a...

When a sovereign faces the risk of debt default, it may be tempted to expropriate the private sector. This may be one reason why international investment in private companies has to take into account the sovereign risk. But the likelihood of sovereign risk transferring to corporates and...

The misalignment between corporate bond and credit default swap (CDS) spreads (i.e., CDSbond basis) during the 2007-09 financial crisis is often attributed to corporate bond dealers shedding off their inventory, right when liquidity was scarce. This paper documents evidence against this...

Market participants and policymakers alike were surprised by the large, prolonged dislocations in credit market arbitrage trades during the second half of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016. In this paper, we examine three explanations proposed by market participants: increased idiosyncratic...

We study market reactions to seasoned equity issuances that were announced by financial companies between 2002 and 2013. To assess the risk and valuation implications of these seasoned equity issuances, we conduct an event analysis using daily credit default swap (CDS) and stock market pricing...

Ongoing regulatory reform efforts aim to make the over-the-counter derivatives market more transparent by introducing public reporting of transaction-level information, including price and volume of trades. However, to date there has been a scarcity of data on the structure of trading in this...