Fear or fundamentals? Heterogeneous beliefs in the European sovereign CDS market

Carl Chiarella, Saskia ter Ellen, Xuezhong (Tony) He () and Eliza Wu

Journal of Empirical Finance, 2015, vol. 32, issue C, 19-34

Abstract: This paper proposes a model for credit default swap (CDS) spreads under heterogeneous expectations to explain the escalation in sovereign European CDS spreads and the widening variations across European sovereigns following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In our model, investors believe that sovereign CDS spreads are determined by country-specific fundamentals and momentum. By estimating the model we find evidence that, while some of the recent movements in sovereign CDS spreads can be explained by deteriorating fundamentals for core European Union (EU) countries, momentum has also played a destabilizing role since the GFC in all sovereign credit markets studied.

Keywords: Sovereign credit risk; European debt crisis; Heterogeneous beliefs; Momentum; CDS pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F34 G01 G12 G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:empfin:v:32:y:2015:i:c:p:19-34

DOI: 10.1016/j.jempfin.2014.11.003

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