We analyse the links between credit default swap (CDS) and bond spreads and try to determine which one is the leading market in the price discovery process. To do that, we construct a sample of CDS premia and bonds spreads on a generic 5-year bond, for 17 financials and 18 sovereigns. First, we run VECM estimations, showing that the CDS market has a lead over the bond market over the whole samp...

This paper develops a theory of financial intermediation. Consider an environment with repeated financial interactions in which strategic default is possible. We show that if interactions between any lender and borrower are infrequent and if market participants have incomplete knowledge of the patterns of interactions in the market, then all investments must be intermediated. Moreover, each int...

Concern has been rising about the health of the U.S. commercial real estate market and any impact it may have on financial markets and institutions. It is too early to judge the full extent of any problems, but commercial real estate financing has been shaken by the financial market turmoil associated with recent residential mortgage defaults. The spreads of commercial mortgage-backed securitie...

We investigate the claim that social rationality explains the emergence of one type of bubble in competitive asset markets that we shall refer to as “credit market bubble,” and that individual rationality explains the subsequent crash. The bubble is defined as a situation where (i) the debt is priced above its intrinsic value and (ii) the debt is rolled over even though each creditor should cas...

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) very often have been criticized for announcing inaccurate credit ratings and are suspected of being exposed to con‡icts of interest. Despite these objections CRAs remained largely unregulated. Based on Pagano & Immordino (2007), we study the optimal regulation of CRAs in a model where rating quality is unobservable and enforcing regulation is costly. The model show...

Do credit market conditions affect corporate capital structures? In an attempt to answer this question, I study two natural experiments that affect corporate access to bank credit: the 1961 expansion of bank credit due to the emergence of the market for CDs, and the contraction associated with the 1966 credit crunch. I document several capital structure reactions to these changes in credit mark...

Could inflated credit ratings that provide new information have adverse ex-ante real effects? If so, why? In a debt-rollover game featuring a feedback loop, we show that when the risky projects have high upside returns, the credit rating agency’s (CRA) ex-ante real effects are negative, despite of its positive informational effects. This arises from the CRAs feedback effects: it strategically a...

This paper analyzes a model where investors use a credit rating to decide whether to finance a firm. The rating quality depends on the credit rating agency’s (CRA) effort, which is unobservable. We analyze optimal compensation contracts for the CRA that differ depending on whether the firm, investors or a social planner orders the rating. We find that rating errors are larger when the firm orde...

This paper develops a theory of the firm, and equilibrium credit rationing mechanisms in oligopoly with R&D-product market competition. Credit rationing arises from a hold-up problem between wealth-constrained entrepreneurs and external investors. Underinvestment occurs if entrepreneurial wealth constraint is binding, even though the equilibrium corporate governance structure addresses the hold...