I study the term structure of credit default swap spreads to understand the dynamics of global and country-specific risk factors in explaining the time-variation in sovereign credit risk. The analysis suggests that the shape of the term structure conveys significant information on the relative...

The shape of the term structure of credit default swap spreads is an informative signal about the relative importance of global and domestic risk factors to the time variation of sovereign credit spreads. Using a geographically dispersed panel of 44 countries, I show that the relative importance...

This study aims to examine the mechanism that governs the significant positive relationship between aggregate earnings changes and contemporaneous changes in the market risk premium. Prior studies point to this relationship but do not provide a clear explanation for it. Therefore, we divide...

While existing asset pricing studies focus on macroeconomic variables to predict stock market risk premium, we find that an aggregate index of corporate activities has substantially greater predictive power both in- and out-of sample, and yields much greater economic gain for a mean-variance...

I extend the evidence on the basic stylized facts documented for the U.S. variance risk premium (VP) and show that, while VPs in other countries are also positive and time varying, they do not have predictive power for domestic stock returns, in contrast to the implications of existing...

The understanding of the Equity Risk Premium (ERP) and the Equity Premium Puzzle (Mehra and Prescott 1985), is still widely discussed in the economic and financial literature. The purpose of this paper is to show differences in the ERP between developed and emerging markets. Using data from both...

Standard consumption-based models typically fail in pricing asset returns. In a famous seminal paper, Mehra and Prescott (1985), using a standard consumption model, prove the presence of a puzzle (i.e. equity premium puzzle). The recent financial literature still has to provide a convincing...

This paper addresses the following questions. Is there evidence of financial contagion in the Eurozone? To what extent a country's vulnerability to contagion depends on "fundamentals" as opposed the government's "credibility"? We look at the empirical evidence on European sovereigns CDS spreads...

We provide evidence for a causal link between the US economy and the global financial cycle. Using intraday data, we show that US macroeconomic news releases have large and significant effects on global risky asset prices. Stock price indexes of 27 countries, the VIX, and commodity prices all...