Spillovers and Contagion in the Sovereign CDS Market

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between sovereign credit default swaps (SCDS) referencing a group of selected developed and emerging economies during the recent sovereign debt crisis. Interdependence and contagion are found on the market dominated by a small number of big international participants. The results show that: (i) a strong commonality exists between global credit spreads (almost half of their variance can be attributed to a single component) with important regional resemblances, (ii) intra-regional spillovers are even more significant, as up to 80% of the forecast error variance of SCDS spreads comes from spillovers, (iii) there is a significant time-variation in spillovers, with contagion from distressed countries gradually diminishing over time as they lose access to bond markets, (iv) the impact of a country’s credit spread on the system appears to be largely liquidity-driven (up to 67% is explained by various liquidity measures).