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This article compares default patterns among prime and subprime mortgages, analyzes the factors correlated with default, and examines how forecasts of defaults are affected by alternative assumptions about trends in home prices. The authors find that extremely pessimistic forecasts of home price appreciation could have generated predictions of subprime defaults that were closer to the actual default experience for loans originated in 2006 and 2007. However, for prime loans one would have also had to anticipate that defaults would become much more sensitive to home prices. Tables and graphs.

The authors develop an equilibrium valuation model that incorporates optimal default to show how mortgage yields and lender recovery rates on defaulted mortgages depend on initial loan-to-value (LTV) ratios. The analysis treats both the frictionless case and the case in which borrowers and lenders incur deadweight costs upon default. The model is calibrated using data on California mortgages. Given reasonable parameter values, the model does a surprisingly good job fitting the risk premium in the data for high LTV mortgages. Thus, from an ex ante perspective, the authors do not find strong evidence of systematic underpricing of default risk in the run-up to the housing market crisis. Charts and tables.

This book is written for those who are interested in a fonnalization of human reasoning, especially in order to build "intelligent" computer systems. Thus, it is mainly designed for the Artificial Intelligence community, both students and researchers, although it can be useful for people working in related fields like cognitive psychology. The major theme is not Artificial Intelligence applications, although these are discussed throughout in sketch fonn. Rather, the book places a heavy emphasis on the fonnal development of default logic, results and problems. Default logic provides a fonnalism for an important part of human reasoning. Default logic is specifically concerned with common sense reasoning, which has recently been recognized in the Artificial Intelligence literature to be of fundamental importance for knowledge representation. Previously, fonnalized reasoning systems failed in real world environments, though succeeding with an acceptable ratio in well-defined environments. This situation enabled empirical explorations and the design of systems without theoretical justification. In particular, they could not be compared since there was no basis to judge their respective ...

Philip Ernstberger analyses in his three essays different topics of financial pathologies. Thereby, changes in fundamentals as well as information are considered as the driving force for the behavior of speculators and investors. The first essay deals with currency crises, in which the central bank, through setting the interest rate, steers the economy and defends against speculators. The second essay examines the effects of a rating and possible biases on the coordination of investors and the pricing of debt. In the third essay the author uses forecasts of default probabilities and implied market default probabilities to infer the weighing of information by investors.

Emerging markets business cycle models treat default risk as part of an exogenous interest rate on working capital, while sovereign default models treat income fluctuations as an exogenous endowment process with ad-noc default costs. We propose instead a general equilibrium model of both sovereign default and business cycles. In the model, some imported inputs require working capital financing; default on public and private obligations occurs simultaneously. The model explains several features of cyclical dynamics around default triggers an efficiency loss as these inputs are replaced by imperfect substitutes; and default on public and private obligations occurs simultaneously. The model explains several features of cyclical dynamics around deraults, countercyclical spreads, high debt ratios, and key business cycle moments.

Politicians default on international debts to please key political supporters, depending on their capacity for voting or revolt.

How creditors came to wield unprecedented power over heavily indebted countries—and the dangers this poses to democracy The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates—why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts? In this compelling and incisive book, Jerome Roos provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. He takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. He vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone—including the dramatic capitulation of Greece’s short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015. Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt ...

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: Credit default swaps are by far the most often traded credit derivatives and the credit default swap markets have seen tremendous growth over the past two decades. Put simply, a credit default swap is a tradeable contract that provides insurance against the default of a certain debtor. Initially, when the first form of a credit default swap (CDS) was traded in 1991, they were mainly used by commercial banks in order to lay off credit risk to insurance companies. However, focus shifted in the subsequent years as new players entered the market. Hedge funds became big players, money managers and reinsurers entered, and banks started to not only buy protection on their assets but also sell protection in order to diversify their portfolios. All this led to today s CDS market being dominated by investors rather than banks and, as a consequence, CDSs are now structured to meet investors needs instead of those of the banks. Over the same time as this shift to an investor orientated market took place, CDS markets grew at an astonishing rate with notional amount outstanding pretty much doubling every year until peaking in the second half of 2007 at USD 62,173.20...

Following on from a consultation paper (Consultation paper 174; ISBN 0117302562) published in January 2004, this report contains proposals for reform of the law regarding the termination of a tenancy during its term, by a landlord, due to the tenant having broken the terms of the tenancy agreement. It sets out, in the form of a draft Bill, a new statutory scheme for the termination of tenancies, including a new concept of 'tenant default', to replace the current law of forfeiture. The proposed scheme would define the circumstances in which a landlord may seek to terminate a tenancy early, require the landlord to warn the tenant of the impending action by giving a written notice, and confers enhanced protection on those with interests deriving out of the tenancy. The report is divided into eight parts with three appendices, and issues considered include: problems with the current law of forfeiture of tenancies and the case for reform; the various components of the proposed scheme, including the concept of tenant default and the stages of a landlord's 'termination claim'; and the role of the court.

We study the relationship between default and the maturity structure of the debt portfolio of a Sovereign, under uncertainty. The Sovereign faces a trade-off between a future costly default and a high current fiscal effort. This results into a debt crisis in case a large initial issuance of long term debt is followed by a sequence of negative macro shocks. Prior uncertainty about future fundamentals is then a source of default through its effect on long term interest rates and the optimal debt issuance. Intuitively, the Sovereign chooses a portfolio implying a risk of default because this risk generates a correlation between the future value of long term debt and future fundamentals. Long term debt serves as a hedging instrument against the risk on fundamentals. When expected fundamentals are high, the Sovereign issues a large amount of long term debt, the expected default probability increases, and so does the long term interest rate.

This paper examines the association between the default risk of foreign bank subsidiaries in developing countries and their parents during the global financial crisis, with the purpose of determining the size and sign of this correlation and, more importantly, understanding what factors can help insulate affiliates from their parents. We find evidence of a significant and robust positive correlation between parent banks’ and foreign subsidiaries’ default risk. This correlation is lower for subsidiaries that have a higher share of retail deposit funding and that are more independently managed from their parents. Host country bank regulations also influence the extent to which shocks to the parents affect the subsidiaries’ default risk. In particular, the correlation between the default risk of subsidiaries and their parents is lower for subsidiaries operating in countries that impose higher capital, reserve, provisioning, and disclosure requirements, and tougher restrictions on bank activities.

Due to the scarcity of reliable data, the existing literature on default risk still displays an imbalance between theoretical and empirical contributions. Consequently, the focus of this book is on empirical work. Within an intensity based modelling framework a broad range of promising specifications is tested using corporate bond data. The book provides one of the most comprehensive empirical studies in the field, from Kalman filtration of affine term structure models to the use of Efficient Method of Moments estimation of dynamic term structure models in a default risky context. Filling another gap in empirical research, the book devotes special attention to the identification factors that can explain credit default swap premia.

We analyze holdings of public bonds by over 20,000 banks in 191 countries, and the role of these bonds in 20 sovereign defaults over 1998-2012. Banks hold many public bonds (on average 9% of their assets), particularly in less financially-developed countries. During sovereign defaults, banks increase their exposure to public bonds, especially large banks and when expected bond returns are high. At the bank level, bondholdings correlate negatively with subsequent lending during sovereign defaults. This correlation is mostly due to bonds acquired in pre-default years. These findings shed light on alternative theories of the sovereign default-banking crisis nexus.

This paper builds a model of a sovereign borrower that has access to credit from private sector creditors and an IFI. Private sector creditors and the IFI offer different debt contracts that are modelled based on the institutional frameworks of these two types of debt. We analyze the decisions of a sovereign on how to allocate its borrowing needs between these two types of creditors, and when to default on its debt to the private sector creditor. The numerical analysis shows that, consistent with the data; the model predicts countercyclical IFI debt along with procyclical commercial debt flows, also matching other features of the data such as frequency of IFI borrowing and mean IFI debt stock.

We provide empirical evidence to support the calibration of a limit on household indebtedness levels, in the form of a cap on the debt-service-to-income (DSTI) ratio, in order to reduce the probability of borrower defaults in Romania. The analysis establishes two findings that are new to the literature. First, we show that the relationship between DSTI and probability of default is non-linear, with probability of default responding to increases in DSTI only after a certain threshold. Second, we establish that consumer loan defaults occur at lower levels of DSTI compared to mortgages. Our results support the recent regulation adopted by the National Bank of Romania, limiting the household DSTI at origination to 40 percent for new mortgages and consumer loans. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that had the limit been in place for all the loans in our sample, the probability of default (PD) would have been lower by 23 percent.

This paper finds optimal fiscal rule parameter values and measures the effects of imposing fiscal rules using a default model calibrated to an economy that in the absence of a fiscal rule pays a significant sovereign default premium. The paper also studies the case in which the government conducts a voluntary debt restructuring to capture the capital gains from the increase in its debt market value implied by a rule announcement. In addition, the paper shows how debt ceilings may reduce the procyclicality of fiscal policy and thus consumption volatility.

In recent years, real estate investment has witnessed an unprecedented internationalisation. However, national markets largely continue to be shaped by domestic law and local business practices. This book provides a comparison of the British and German property markets, which are Europe's most important, and discusses key elements of the economics of leasing. Applying the theory of long-term contracts and the economic analysis of bankruptcy law to leases, it examines in detail the regulations pertaining to rent adjustment and tenant default, which can substantially impact investment performance. The prevailing rent adjustment mechanisms such as rent review and indexation are discussed. A comparison is made of the remedies available to landlords of defaulting tenants under both jurisdictions.

"The probability approach to uncertainty and modeling is applied to default probability estimation. Default estimation for low-default portfolios has attracted attention as banks contemplate the requirements of Basel II's IRB rules. Nicholas M. Kiefer proposes the formal introduction of expert information into quantitative analysis. An application treating the incorporation of expert information on the default probability is considered in detail"--Abstract

What do self-interested governments’ needs to maintain loyal groups of supporters imply for sovereign incentives to repay debt? Many sovereign defaults have occurred at relatively low levels of debt, while some highly indebted nations continue to honour their obligations. This poses a problem for traditional models of sovereign debt, which rely on the threat of economic sanctions to explain why and when a representative agent seeking to maximise social welfare would choose debt-repayment. The political-economy model of sovereign default developed in this ePaper shows that those governments that depend on small groups of loyalists drawn from large populations are more likely to default on sovereign debt than those governments dependent on large groups of supporters. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature on the importance of institutions in sovereign debt and default.

Credit risk pervades all nancial transactions. The credit crisis has indicated the need for quantitative models for valuation, hedging, rating, risk management and regulatory monitoring of credit risk. A credit investor such as a bank granting loans to rms or an asset manager buying corporate bonds is exposed to correlated default risk. A portfolio credit derivative is a nancial security that allows the investor to transfer this risk to the credit market. In the rst part of this thesis, we study the valuation and risk analysis of portfolio derivatives. To capture the complex economic phenomena that drive the pricing of these securities, we introduce a time-changed birth process as a probabilistic model of correlated event timing. The self-exciting property of a time-changed birth process captures the feedback from events that is often observed in credit markets. The stochastic variation of arrival rates between events captures the exposure of rms to common economic risk factors. We derive a closed-form expression for the distribution of a time-changed birth process, and develop analytically tractable pricing relations for a range of portfolio derivatives valuation problems. We...

Philippe Beneton, a prominent French religious conservative, has long meditated on Tocqueville, and Equality by Default is Tocquevillian in that it does not offer a partisan polemic, but rather paints a picture of contemporary life-a picture that is also a guide for discernment for those who have a difficult time "seeing" contemporary liberalism for what it is. Artfully translated by Ralph Hancock, Equality by Default offers a unique and strikingly insightful account of the late-modern mind.