An international initiative to increase the use of central clearing for OTC derivatives emerged as one of the reactions to the 2008 financial crisis. The move to central clearing is a fundamental change in the structure of the market. Central clearing will help control counterparty credit risk,...

Traditional liquidity measures can provide a false impression of the liquidity and stability of financial market trading. Using data on auctions (bids wanted in competition; BWICs) from the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) market, we show that a standard measure of liquidity, the effective...

In the event of a clearing member's default, and as part of its default management process, a central counterparty (CCP) will need to hedge the defaulter's portfolio and to close-out its positions. However, the CCP may not be able to do this without incurring additional losses if the market is...

I study dispersion of CDS premia in a theoretical over-the-counter (OTC) economy. Agents have heterogeneous expectations about counterparty and reference entity default rates. In equilibrium, spreads of CDS contracts vary based on counterparty characteristics even if reference entity risk is...