We show whether central clearing of a particular class of derivatives lowers counterparty risk. For plausible cases, adding a central clearing counterparty (CCP) for a class of derivatives such as credit default swaps reduces netting efficiency, leading to an increase in average exposure to counterparty default. Further, clearing different classes of derivatives in separate CCPs always increases counterparty exposures relative to clearing the combined set of derivatives in a single CCP. We provide theory as well as illustrative numerical examples of these results that are calibrated to notional derivatives position data for major banks.

This article provides the causes and symptoms of special repo rates in a competitive market for repurchase agreements. A repo rate is, in effect, an interest rate on loans collateralized by a specific instrument. A 'special' is a repo rate significantly below prevailing market riskless interest rates. This article shows that specials can occur when those owning the collateral are inhibited, whether from legal or institutional requirements or from frictional costs, from supplying collateral into repurchase agreements. Specialness increases the equilibrium price for the underlying instrument by the present value of savings in borrowing costs associated with the repo specials.

Size-discovery mechanisms allow large quantities of an asset to be exchanged at a price that does not respond to price pressure. Primary examples include "workup" in Treasury markets, "matching sessions" in corporate bond and CDS markets, and block-trading "dark pools" in equity markets. By freezing the execution price and giving up on market-clearing, size-discovery mechanisms overcome concerns by large investors over their price impacts. Price-discovery mechanisms clear the market, but cause investors to internalize their price impacts, inducing costly delays in the reduction of position imbalances. We show how augmenting a price-discovery mechanism with a size-discovery mechanism improves allocative efficiency.

We present a model for the equilibrium movement of capital between asset markets that are distinguished only by the levels of capital invested in each. Investment in that market with the greatest amount of capital earns the lowest risk premium. Intermediaries optimally trade off the costs of intermediation against fees that depend on the gain they can offer to investors for moving their capital to the market with the higher mean return. The bargaining power of an investor depends on potential access to alternative intermediaries. In equilibrium, the speeds of adjustment of mean returns and of capital between the two markets are increasing in the degree to which capital is imbalanced between the two markets, and can be reduced by competition among intermediaries.

This article presents a model for valuing claims subject to default by both contracting parties, such as swaps and forwards. With counterparties of different default risk, the promised cash flows of a swap are discounted by a switching discount rate that, at any given state and time, is equal to the discount rate of the counterparty for whom the swap is currently out of the money (that is, a liability). The impact of credit-risk asymmetry and of netting is presented through both theory and numerical examples, which include interest rate and currency swaps.

[This article presents convenient reduced-form models of the valuation of contingent claims subject to default risk, focusing on applications to the term structure of interest rates for corporate or sovereign bonds. Examples include the valuation of a credit-spread option.]

[This article explores the information effect of financial risk management. Financial hedging improves the informativeness of corporate earnings as a signal of management ability and project quality by eliminating extraneous noise. Managerial and shareholder incentives regarding information transmission may differ, however, leading to conflicts regarding an optimal hedging policy. We show that these incentives depend on the accounting information made available by the firm. Under some circumstances, if hedge transactions are not disclosed (i.e., firms report only aggregate earnings), managers hedge to achieve greater risk reduction than they would if full disclosure were required. In these cases, it is optimal for shareholders to request only aggregate accounting reports.]

[Asset pricing theory is presented with representative-agent utility given by a stochastic differential formulation of recursive utility. Asset returns are characterized from general first-order conditions of the Hamilton-Bellman-Jacobi equation for optimal control. Homothetic representative-agent recursive utility functions are shown to imply that excess expected rates of return on securities are given by a linear combination of the continuous-time market-portfolio-based capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the consumption-based CAPM. The Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross characterization of the term structure is examined with a recursive generalization, showing the response of the term structure to variations in risk aversion. Also, a new multicommodity factor-return model, as well as an extension of the "usual" discounted expected value formula for asset prices, is introduced.]

[This article presents a simple model of the innovation of new futures contracts by transaction volume-maximizing futures exchanges in incomplete markets under uncertainty, with mean-variance preferences and proportional transactions costs. We characterize the set of Nash equilibria for a number of exchanges simultaneously or sequentially choosing contracts. The optimal monopolistic contract design is shown to be Pareto-optimal. An example shows the failure of Pareto optimality for a particular Nash equilibrium. Likewise, in a monopolistic multiperiod setting, an example shows the failure of Pareto optimality given an incentive for the exchange to induce turnover.]

If you pick up a copy of Theory of Valuation,1 and I suggest that you do, the first thing likely to impress you is the length of the editors' last names (26 letters in total). After getting over that, you will probably turn to the table of contents to see which of your friends or mentors are represented. If you are like me, you might be embarrassed that you had not yet read one (I will not say which one in my case), or perhaps more, of these classics, and you might feel that there are one or more pieces that might have been added. Perhaps your choices would include Harrison and Kreps' (1979) martingale characterization of security prices or Arrow's (1953) paper on “The Role of Securities in the Optimal Allocation of Risk Bearing,” (still required reading for doctoral finance students at Stanford). On the whole, however, you will be impressed. If you teach a course on asset pricing theory for doctoral students, you are likely to adopt this book as a supplementary text. If you read the book from cover to cover, including the mainly excellent new discussions, you will have fun and will profit from the time spent.