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The Market Price of Credit Risk: An Empirical Analysis of Interest Rate Swap Spreads

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Author Info
Jun Liu (Anderson School of Management)
Francis Longstaff (Anderson School of Management)
Ravit Mandell (Salomon Smith Barney)
Abstract

This paper studies the market price of credit risk incorporated into one of the most important credit spreads in the financial markets: interestrate swap spreads. Our approach consists of jointly modeling the swap and Treasury term structures using a four-factor affine credit framework and estimating the parameters by maximum likelihood. We solve for the implied special financing rate for Treasury bonds and find that the liquidity component of on-the-run bond prices can be very significant. We show that most of the variation in swap spreads is driven by changes in the liquidity of Treasury bonds rather than changes in default risk. We find that there are positive credit premia in swap spreads on average. These premia, however, vary significantly over time and were negative for much of the 1990s. Since the hedge-fund crisis of 1998, credit premia have become positive and are currently at historical highs.

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Paper provided by Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA in its series University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management with number 1076.

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Date of creation: 01 Oct 2000
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Handle: RePEc:cdl:anderf:1076

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Pearson, N.D. & Sun, T.S., 1991. "An Empirical Examination of the Cox, Ingersoll and Ross Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Papers fb-24, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
  2. Vasicek, Oldrich, 1977. "An equilibrium characterization of the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 177-188, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1995. " A Simple Approach to Valuing Risky Fixed and Floating Rate Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 789-819, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Hua He, 2000. "Modeling Term Structures of Swap Spreads," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm150, Yale School of Management. [Downloadable!]
  5. Duffie, Darrell & Huang, Ming, 1996. " Swap Rates and Credit Quality," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 921-49, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Pierre Collin-Dufresne, 2001. "On the Term Structure of Default Premia in the Swap and LIBOR Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 1095-1115, 06. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Jun Liu & Francis Longstaff, 2000. "Losing Money on Arbitrages: Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Choice in Markets with Arbitrage Opportunities," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management 1054, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA. [Downloadable!]
  11. Duffee, Gregory R, 1999. "Estimating the Price of Default Risk," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(1), pages 197-226.
  12. Monika Piazzesi, 2001. "An Econometric Model of the Yield Curve with Macroeconomic Jump Effects," NBER Working Papers 8246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1999. "Modeling Term Structures of Defaultable Bonds," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 687-720.
  14. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1992. " Interest Rate Volatility and the Term Structure: A Two-Factor General Equilibrium Model," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1259-82, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Fama, Eugene F & Bliss, Robert R, 1987. "The Information in Long-Maturity Forward Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 680-92, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  23. Sun, Tong-sheng & Sundaresan, Suresh & Wang, Ching, 1993. "Interest rate swaps: An empirical investigation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 77-99, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Maciej Firla-Cuchra & Tim Jenkinson, 2005. "Why are Securitization Issues Tranched?," OFRC Working Papers Series 2005fe04, Oxford Financial Research Centre. [Downloadable!]
  2. Liuren Wu & Frank Xiaoling Zhang, 2005. "A no-arbitrage analysis of economic determinants of the credit spread term structure," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-59, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  3. Francis Longstaff, 2001. "The Flight-to-Liquidity Premium in U.S. Treasury Bond Prices," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management 1004, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA. [Downloadable!]
  4. Maciej Firla-Cuchra & Tim Jenkinson, 2005. "Security Design in the Real World: Why are Securitization Issues Tranched?," Economics Series Working Papers 225, University of Oxford, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  5. Alejandro Revéiz Hérault, 2002. "Factores determinantes de los márgenes entre bonos del gobierno y bonos corporativos en los Estados Unidos," LECTURAS EN FINANZAS 002710, BANCO DE LA REPÚBLICA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Hayette Gatfaoui, 2003. "Risque de Défaut et Risque de Liquidité : Une Etude de Deux Composantes du Spread de Crédit," Risk and Insurance 0308005, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  7. Massoud Heidari & Liuren Wu, 2002. "Term Structure of Interest Rates, Yield Curve Residuals, and the Consistent Pricing of Interest Rates and Interest Rate Derivatives," Finance 0207010, EconWPA, revised 05 Sep 2002. [Downloadable!]
  8. Maciej Firla-Cuchra, 2005. "Explaining Launch Spreads on Structured Bonds," Economics Series Working Papers 230, University of Oxford, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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