Interest Rate Swap Market Complexity and Its Risk Management Implications

The primary objective of this paper is to study the post Dodd-Frank network structure of the interest rate swap market and propose a set of effective complexity measures to understand how the swap users respond to market risks. We use a unique swap dataset extracted from the swap data repositories (SDRs) to examine the network structure properties and market participants’ risk management behaviors. We find (a) the interest rate swap market follows a scale-free network where the power-law exponent is less than 2, which indicates that few of its important entities have a significant number of contracts within their subsidiaries (a.k.a. interaffiliated swap contracts); (b) swap rate volatility Granger-causes swap users to increase their risk sharing intensity at entity level, but market participants do not change their risk management strategies in general; (c) there is a significant contemporaneous correlation between the swap rate volatility and the underlying interest rate futures volatility. However, interest rate swap volatility does not cause the underlying interest rate futures volatility and vice versa. These findings provide the market regulators and swap users a better understanding of interest rate swap market participants’ risk management behaviors, and it also provides a method to monitor the swap market risk sharing dynamics.