IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/nystfi/98-069.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credit Risk and the Pricing of Japanese Yen Interest Rate Swaps

Author

Listed:
  • Marti G. Subrahmanyam
  • Young Ho Eom
  • Jun Uno

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the pricing of Japanese yen interest rate swaps during the period 1990 to 1996 with particular reference to credit risk. We estimate the default-free term structure of interest rates using the prices of ten-year Japanese Government Bonds (JGB's), using the basis -spline method. Since there are fewer observations for the swap market, the term structure of swap spot rates is estimated using the more parsimonious polynomial method of Nelson and Siegel. This term structure is then used as the reference for the determination of the spread of swap rates over comparable default-free rates. Two alternative definitions are used for the swap spread. The first is based on the difference between the swap rate and the default-free par-bond yield of the same maturity. The second is based on the difference between the implied zero-coupon (spot) rates in the swap market compared to those in the JGB market. We are able to fit the swap and JGB term structures with low fitting errors of approximately 11 basis points and 2 basis points respectively in terms of the mean absolute deviation. We investigate the statistical properties of the default-free spot rates and the swap spread and reject the hypothesis of lognormality of both variables. The swap spread in the yen market displays an inverted U-shape, in contrast to the dollar market where it rises monotonically. This may be partly explained by liquidity effects in the JGB market as well as market segmentation. Surprisingly, the yen swap spread is only weakly linked to the yen swap spread, although there are indications of causality, especially at the short end, from the dollar market to the yen market. We then investigate how yield curve as well as credit risk factors affects the spread. Our regression results show that the swap spread is negatively related to the level and slope of the term structure and positively related to the curvature. The spread is also positively related to proxies for the short- and long-term credit risk factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Marti G. Subrahmanyam & Young Ho Eom & Jun Uno, 2000. "Credit Risk and the Pricing of Japanese Yen Interest Rate Swaps," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-069, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:nystfi:98-069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/fin/workpapers/wpa98069.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Helwege & Christopher M. Turner, 1999. "The Slope of the Credit Yield Curve for Speculative‐Grade Issuers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1869-1884, October.
    2. Shea, Gary S., 1984. "Pitfalls in Smoothing Interest Rate Term Structure Data: Equilibrium Models and Spline Approximations," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 253-269, September.
    3. Arturo Estrella & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1998. "Predicting U.S. Recessions: Financial Variables As Leading Indicators," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 45-61, February.
    4. Mark Grinblatt, 2001. "An Analytic Solution for Interest Rate Swap Spreads," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 2(3), pages 113-149, September.
    5. McCulloch, J Huston, 1971. "Measuring the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 19-31, January.
    6. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Gupta, Anurag & Subrahmanyam, Marti G., 2000. "An empirical examination of the convexity bias in the pricing of interest rate swaps," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 239-279, February.
    8. Boudoukh, Jacob & Whitelaw, Robert F, 1993. "Liquidity as a Choice Variable: A Lesson from the Japanese Government Bond Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 265-292.
    9. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1997. "An Econometric Model of the Term Structure of Interest-Rate Swap Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1287-1321, September.
    10. Robert A. Jarrow & Stuart M. Turnbull, 2008. "Pricing Derivatives on Financial Securities Subject to Credit Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 17, pages 377-409, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    12. Lars E.O. Svensson, 1994. "Estimating and Interpreting Forward Interest Rates: Sweden 1992 - 1994," NBER Working Papers 4871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Benjamin M. Friedman & Kenneth Kuttner, 1993. "Why Does the Paper-Bill Spread Predict Real Economic Activity?," NBER Chapters, in: Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting, pages 213-254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Litzenberger, Robert H, 1992. "Swaps: Plain and Fanciful," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 831-850, July.
    15. McCulloch, J Huston, 1975. "The Tax-Adjusted Yield Curve," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 30(3), pages 811-830, June.
    16. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number stoc93-1.
    17. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W. (ed.), 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226774886.
    18. Nelson, Charles R & Siegel, Andrew F, 1987. "Parsimonious Modeling of Yield Curves," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(4), pages 473-489, October.
    19. Sun, Tong-sheng & Sundaresan, Suresh & Wang, Ching, 1993. "Interest rate swaps: An empirical investigation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 77-99, August.
    20. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:5:p:1351-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Duffie, Darrell & Huang, Ming, 1996. "Swap Rates and Credit Quality," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 921-949, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Azad, A.S.M. Sohel & Batten, Jonathan A. & Fang, Victor, 2015. "What determines the yen swap spread?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-13.
    2. Li, Gang & Zhang, Chu, 2019. "Counterparty credit risk and derivatives pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(3), pages 647-668.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:wyi:journl:002109 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Liu, Jun & Longstaff, Francis A. & Mandell, Ravit E., 2000. "The Market Price of Credit Risk: An Empirical Analysis of Interest Rate Swap Spreads," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt0zw4f9w6, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    3. Lekkos, Ilias, 2007. "Modelling multiple term structures of defaultable bonds with common and idiosyncratic state variables," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 783-817, December.
    4. Fang, Victor & Muljono, Ronny, 2003. "An empirical analysis of the Australian dollar swap spreads," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 153-173, April.
    5. Duffie, Darrell, 2003. "Intertemporal asset pricing theory," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 639-742, Elsevier.
    6. Mark Grinblatt, 2001. "An Analytic Solution for Interest Rate Swap Spreads," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 2(3), pages 113-149, September.
    7. Gonzalo Cortazar & Eduardo S. Schwartz & Lorenzo F. Naranjo, 2007. "Term-structure estimation in markets with infrequent trading," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 353-369.
    8. Augustin, P. & Chernov, M. & Schmid, L. & Song, D., 2021. "Benchmark interest rates when the government is risky," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 74-100.
    9. Jun Liu & Francis A. Longstaff & Ravit E. Mandell, 2006. "The Market Price of Risk in Interest Rate Swaps: The Roles of Default and Liquidity Risks," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(5), pages 2337-2360, September.
    10. Vadim Kaushanskiy & Victor Lapshin, 2016. "A nonparametric method for term structure fitting with automatic smoothing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(58), pages 5654-5666, December.
    11. Emma Berenguer-Carceles & Ricardo Gimeno & Juan M. Nave, 2012. "Estimation of the Term Structure of Interest Rates: Methodology and Applications," Working Papers 12.06, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Financial Economics and Accounting (former Department of Business Administration).
    12. Ganchev, Alexander, 2009. "Modeling the yield curve of spot interest rates under the conditions in Bulgaria," MPRA Paper 70048, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Lee, Shyan Yuan & Chiou, Wan-Jiun Paul & Chung, Yi-Fang, 2017. "Pricing corporate bonds and constructing credit curves in a developing country: The case of the Taiwan bond fund crisis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 261-274.
    14. Azad, A.S.M. Sohel & Batten, Jonathan A. & Fang, Victor, 2015. "What determines the yen swap spread?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-13.
    15. Lin, Bing-Huei, 1999. "Fitting the term structure of interest rates for Taiwanese government bonds," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 9(3-4), pages 331-352, November.
    16. Lauren Stagnol, 2017. "Introducing global term structure in a risk parity framework," Working Papers hal-04141648, HAL.
    17. Antulio N. Bomfim, 2003. "Counterparty credit risk in interest rate swaps during times of market stress," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-09, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Samuel Chege Maina, 2011. "Credit Risk Modelling in Markovian HJM Term Structure Class of Models with Stochastic Volatility," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2011, January-A.
    19. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    20. Dai, Qiang & Singleton, Kenneth J., 2003. "Fixed-income pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 1207-1246, Elsevier.
    21. Tong, Xiaojun & He, Zhuoqiong Chong & Sun, Dongchu, 2018. "Estimating Chinese Treasury yield curves with Bayesian smoothing splines," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 94-124.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fth:nystfi:98-069. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fdnyuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.