How do global investors differentiate between sovereign risks? The new normal versus the old

Marlene Amstad, Eli Remolona and Jimmy Shek

No 541, BIS Working Papers from Bank for International Settlements

Abstract: When global investors go into emerging markets or get out of them, how do they differentiate between economies? Has this behaviour changed since the crisis of 2008 to reflect a "new normal"? We consider these questions by focusing on sovereign risk as reflected in monthly returns on credit default swaps (CDS) for 18 emerging markets and 10 developed countries. Tests for breaks in the time series of such returns suggest a new normal that ensued around October 2008 or soon afterwards. Dividing the sample into two periods and extracting risk factors from CDS returns, we find an old normal in which a single global risk factor drives half of the variation in returns and a new normal in which that risk factor becomes even more dominant. Surprisingly, in both the old and new normal, the way countries load on this factor depends not so much on economic fundamentals as on whether they are designated an emerging market.

Keywords: Emerging market; CDS; sovereign risk; risk factor; new normal; taper tantrum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2016-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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Journal Article: How do global investors differentiate between sovereign risks? The new normal versus the old (2016)
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