Why is price discovery in credit default swap markets news-specific?
Marsh, Ian W.; Wagner, Wolf (01.02.2012)
Numero
6/2012Julkaisija
Bank of Finland
2012
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:bof-20140807682Tiivistelmä
We analyse daily lead-lag patterns in US equity and credit default swap (CDS) returns. We first document that equity returns robustly lead CDS returns. However, we find that the CDS-lag is due to common (and not firm-specific) news and arises predominantly in response to positive (instead of negative) equity market news. We provide an explanation for this news-specific price discovery based on dealers in the CDS market exploiting their informational advantage vis-à-vis institutional investors with hedging demands. In support of this explanation we find that the CDS-lag and its news-specificity are related to various firm-level proxies for hedging demand in the cross-section as well measures for economy-wide informational asymmetries over time. Keywords: credit default swap, price discovery, informational efficiency, hedging demand JEL codes: G12, G15, G21