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Half-full or Half-empty? Financial Institutions, CDS Use, and Corporate Credit Risk

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Abstract

We construct a novel U.S. data set that matches bank holding company credit default swap (CDS) positions to detailed U.S. credit registry data containing both loan and corporate bond holdings to study the effects of banks' CDS use on corporate credit quality. Banks may use CDS to mitigate agency frictions and not renegotiate loans with solvent but illiquid borrowers resulting in poorer measures of credit risk. Alternatively, banks may lay off the credit risk of high quality borrowers through the CDS market to comply with risk-based capital requirements, which does not impact corporate credit risk. We find new evidence that corporate default probabilities and downgrade likelihoods, if anything, are slightly lower when banks purchase CDS against their borrowers. The results are consistent with banks using CDS to efficiently lay off credit risk rather than inefficiently liquidate firms.

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  • Cecilia R. Caglio & Matt Darst & Eric Parolin, 2018. "Half-full or Half-empty? Financial Institutions, CDS Use, and Corporate Credit Risk," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-047, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-47
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2018.047
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    Cited by:

    1. Czech, Robert, 2021. "Credit default swaps and corporate bond trading," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    2. Maximilian Jager & Frederick Zadow, 2023. "Clear(ed) Decision: The Effect of Central Clearing on Firms Financing Decision," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_445, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    3. Söhnke M Bartram & Jennifer Conrad & Jongsub Lee & Marti G Subrahmanyam, 2022. "Credit Default Swaps around the World," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(5), pages 2464-2524.
    4. Hans Degryse & Yalin Gündüz & Kuchulain O'Flynn & Steven Ongena, 2020. "Identifying Empty Creditors with a Shock and Micro-Data," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-15, Swiss Finance Institute.
    5. Benbouzid, Nadia & Kumar, Abhishek & Mallick, Sushanta K. & Sousa, Ricardo M. & Stojanovic, Aleksandar, 2022. "Bank credit risk and macro-prudential policies: Role of counter-cyclical capital buffer," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    6. Hao, Xiangchao & Sun, Qinru & Xie, Fang, 2022. "International evidence for the substitution effect of FX derivatives usage on bank capital buffer," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    7. R. Matthew Darst & Ehraz Refayet, 2018. "Credit Default Swaps in General Equilibrium: Endogenous Default and Credit‐Spread Spillovers," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(8), pages 1901-1933, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank lending; Credit default swaps; Risk management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

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