Showing papers by "Marti G. Subrahmanyam published in 2012"

Illiquidity or credit deterioration: A study of liquidity in the UScorporate bond market during

Abstract: We investigate whether liquidity is an important price factor in the US corporate bond market. In particular, we focus on whether liquidity eects are more pronounced in periods of nancial crises, especially for bonds with high credit risk, using a unique data set covering more than 20,000 bonds, between October 2004 and December 2008. We employ a wide range of liquidity measures and nd that liquidity eects account for approximately 14% of the explained market-wide corporate yield spread changes. We conclude that the economic impact of the liquidity measures is signicantly larger in periods of crisis, and for speculative grade bonds.

Does the Tail Wag the Dog? The Effect of Credit Default Swaps on Credit Risk

Abstract: Concerns have been raised, especially since the global financial crisis, about whether trading in credit default swaps (CDS) increases the credit risk of the reference entities. We use a unique, comprehensive sample covering 901 CDS introductions on North American corporate issuers between June 1997 and April 2009 to address this question. We present evidence that the probability of credit rating downgrade and the probability of bankruptcy both increase after the inception of CDS trading. The effect is robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS introduction, i.e., the possibility that firms with upcoming deterioration in creditworthiness are more likely to be selected for CDS trading. We show that the CDS-protected lenders' reluctance to restructure is the most likely cause of the increase in credit risk. We present evidence that firms with relatively larger amounts of CDS contracts outstanding, and those with more "No Restructuring" contracts, are more likely to be adversely affected by CDS trading. We also document that CDS trading increases the level of participation of bank lenders to the firm. Our findings are broadly consistent with the predictions of the "empty creditor" model of Bolton and Oehmke (2011).

Private Placements to Owner-Managers: Theory and Evidence

Abstract: We present an asymmetric information model to examine private placements issued to owner-managers. Our main conclusion is that allowing private placements to insiders can mit- igate, if not eliminate, the underinvestment problem. Our model predicts that announcement period returns for private placements should be: (1) positive; (2) dependent on regulatory constraints that determine the issue price; (3) positively related to volatility; (4) negatively related to leverage; (5) negatively related to owner-managers’ shareholdings (6) inversely re- lated to proxies of manipulation; and (7) negatively related to illiquidity. We empirically test our model’s predictions, along with others from literature, on a sample of private placements issued in the Indian capital markets during 2001-09 and report empirical evidence largely consistent with the model.

Does the Tail Wag the Dog? The Effect of Credit Default Swaps on Credit Risk

Abstract: Credit default swaps (CDS) are derivative contracts that are widely used as tools for credit risk management. However, in recent years, concerns have been raised about whether CDS trading itself affects the credit risk of the reference entities. We use a unique, comprehensive sample covering CDS trading of 901 North American corporate issuers, between June 1997 and April 2009, to address this question. We find that the probability of both a credit rating downgrade and bankruptcy increase, with large economic magnitudes, after the inception of CDS trading. This finding is robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading. Beyond the CDS introduction effect, we show that firms with relatively larger amounts of CDS contracts outstanding, and those with relatively more "no restructuring" contracts than other types of CDS contracts covering restructuring, are more adversely affected by CDS trading. Moreover, the number of creditors increases after CDS trading begins, exacerbating creditor coordination failure for the resolution of financial distress.

Background Risk and Trading in a Full-Information Rational Expectations Economy

Abstract: In this paper, we assume that investors have the same information, but trade due to the evolution of their non-market wealth. In our formulation, investors rebalance their portfolios in response to changes in their expected non-market wealth, and hence trade. We assume an incomplete market in which risky non-market wealth is non-hedgeable and independent of market risk, and thus represents an additive background risk. Investors who experience positive shocks to their expected wealth buy more stocks from those who experience less positive shocks. The extent of trading depends on the heterogeneity of the shocks to the expected background risk across the agents. The demands of the two agents are convex or concave in the state of the economy, which justifies trading in the aggregate assets and contingent claims.