Trading in the CDS market in this paper occurs because irrational investors have optimal beliefs about the default state of the economy, those investors tend to be overly optimistic that default is less likely. Since the imposition of the CDS ban on member states of the European Union in 2012,...

What determines the price of insurance against default of advanced economies? Our laboratory to answer this question is the credit default swap (CDS) market on government debt of 18 advanced economies. The price of credit protection on these countries shows a strong degree of co-movement, has...