Theoretical credit risk models a la Merton (1974) predict a non-linear negative link between a firm's default likelihood and asset value. This motivates us to propose a flexible empirical Markov-switching bivariate copula that allows for distinct time-varying dependence between credit default...

We analyze the cross-border propagation of systemic risk in the international sovereign debt market. Using daily data on CDS spreads for 67 sovereign borrowers from 2002 to 2013 we define sovereign credit events as those in which the spread widens by more than 99.9% of all spread changes within...