The real effects of credit default swaps

Abstract

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the real effects of credit default swaps (CDS) on the economy. Different from the hitherto accepted view that derivatives are redundant, CDS may affect the credit risk and strategic liquidity decision of the reference entities. In this dissertation, I use a unique, comprehensive sample covering 901 CDS introductions on North American corporate issuers, between June 1997 and April 2009, to address these questions.

In chapter 2, I investigate whether CDS trading increases the credit risk of the reference entities. I find that the probability of both a credit rating downgrade and bankruptcy increase after the inception of CDS trading. This finding is robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading in difference-in-difference analysis, propensity score matching, and treatment regressions with instruments. In further corroboration of our basic results, I explore the mechanism behind the increased credit risk after CDS trading, and show that firms with relatively larger amounts of CDS contracts outstanding, and those with more “no restructuring” contracts, are more adversely affected by CDS trading.

In chapter 3, I further investigate the effect of CDS on corporate cash holding policies. U.S. firms are holding more cash than at any time in nearly half a century. I find that CDS trading affects corporate cash holdings. Corporate cash holdings increase after the inception of CDS trading. The impact is significant after controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading. Moreover, cash-to-assets ratios for firms with larger CDS contracts outstanding, and those with less access to financial market are more affected by CDS trading. The impact of CDS is beyond the direct effect of line of credit on cash holdings.