Suchergebnisse

Credit risk has become an important factor driving government bond returns. We therefore introduce an asset pricing model which exploits information contained in both forward interest rates and forward CDS spreads. Our empirical analysis covers euro-zone countries with German government bonds as credit risk-free assets. We construct a market factor from the first three principal components of the German forward curve as well as a common and a country-specific credit factor from the principal components of the forward CDS curves. We find that predictability of risk premiums of sovereign euro-zone bonds improves substantially if the market factor is augmented by a common and an orthogonal country-specific credit factor. While the common credit factor is significant for most countries in the sample, the country-specific factor is significant mainly for peripheral euro-zone countries. Finally, we find that during the current crisis period, market and credit risk premiums of government bonds are negative over long subintervals, a finding that we attribute to the presence of financial repression in euro-zone countries.

We consider the risk premium demanded by a decision maker in order to be indifferent between obtaining a new level of wealth with certainty, or to participate in a lottery which either results in unchanged wealth or an even higher level than what can be obtained with certainty. We study preferences such that the corresponding relative risk premium is a decreasing function of present wealth, and we determine the set of associated utility functions. We find a new characterization of risk vulnerability and determine a large set of utility functions, closed under summation and composition, which are both risk vulnerable and have decreasing relative risk premium. We finally introduce the notion of partial risk neutral preferences on binary lotteries and show that partial risk neutrality is equivalent to preferences with decreasing relative risk premium.

Credit risk has become an important factor driving government bond returns. We therefore introduce an asset pricing model which exploits information contained in both forward interest rates and forward CDS spreads. Our empirical analysis covers euro-zone countries with German government bonds as credit risk-free assets. We construct a market factor from the first three principal components of the German forward curve as well as a common and a country-specific credit factor from the principal components of the forward CDS curves. We find that predictability of risk premiums of sovereign euro-zone bonds improves substantially if the market factor is augmented by a common and an orthogonal country-specific credit factor. While the common credit factor is significant for most countries in the sample, the country-specific factor is significant mainly for peripheral euro-zone countries. Finally, we find that during the current crisis period, market and credit risk premiums of government bonds are negative over long subintervals, a finding that we attribute to the presence of financial repression in euro-zone countries.

Purpose
This study aims to examine short- and long-run effects of specific macroeconomic conditions on risk premium estimates on lending.


Design/methodology/approach
Empirical estimates are based on error correction and autoregressive distributed lag models.


Findings
The results suggest that, in the short run, inflation expectations, recession expectations and actual inflationary conditions tend to have a significant impact on risk premium estimates; in the long run, however, only inflation expectations and recession expectations are significant in risk premium estimates on lending.


Originality/value
This study examines how specific conditions of uncertainty and expectations influence variability in risk premium estimates on lending in the US economy.

We develop a simple overlapping generations model in which the young have a choice in investing in equities or index‐linked bonds. Projections of share price uncertainty over a 30‐year period show that the risk associated with such long‐term investments predicts an equity premium that matches historical values. Moreover, we calibrate the model and show that it can predict up to the fourth moment of both the observed risk premium and the real rate of interest.