Credit Default Swap spreads have been used as a leading indicator of distress. Default probabilities can be extracted from CDS spreads, but during distress it is important to take account of the stochastic nature of recovery value. The recent episodes of Landbanski, WAMU and Lehman illustrate that using the industry-standard fixed recovery rate assumption gives default probabilities that are low relative to those extracted from stochastic recovery value as proxied by the cheapest-to-deliver bonds. Financial institutions using fixed rate recovery assumptions could have a false sense of security, and could be faced with outsized losses with potential knock-on effects for other institutions. To ensure effective oversight of financial institutions, and to monitor the stability of the global financial system especially during distress, the stochastic nature of recovery rates needs to be incorporated.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by International Monetary Fund in its series IMF Working Papers with number
09/62.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: