The paper develops a structural credit risk model to study sovereign credit risk and the dynamics of sovereign credit spreads. The model features endogenous default and recovery rates that both depend on the interaction between domestic output fluctuations and global macroeconomic conditions. We show that sovereigns choose to default at higher levels of economic output once global macroeconomic conditions are bad. This yields to default rates and credit spreads that are substantially higher compared to normal times. We derive closed-form expressions for sovereign debt values and default times and focus on the dynamics of sovereign credit spreads. As opposed to standard theories of sovereign debt, this paper’s structural model generates much richer default patterns and non-linearities through regime-shifts in the global macroeconomic environment. Moreover, changes in the global environment reveal the interconnectedness of the financial system.

This paper develops a simple model for a leveraged firm and endogenizes the firm’s bankruptcy point by assuming that equity issuance is costly. Equity-issuance costs reflect the difficulties in issuing new equity for firms that are close to financial distress. The resulting model captures cash-flow shortage as a reason to go bankrupt, though the equity value is positive. I analyze the optimal bankruptcy point as well as corporate bond prices and yield spreads for various levels of equity-issuance costs in order to study the impact of different liquidity constraints. Finally, I discuss the consequences on optimal capital structure.

Recovery risk to explain corporate debt premia has not received much attention so far, most likely due to the difficulties around decomposing the expected loss. We exploit the fact that differently-ranking debt instruments of the same issuer face identical default risk but different default-conditional recovery rates. This allows us to isolate implied recovery under the T-forward measure without any of the rigid assumptions employed by prior studies. We find a pronounced systematic component in recovery rates for which investors should receive a premium. Comparisons to physical realizations show that the premium is quite time-stable and similar for different debt seniorities.

This article presents a stochastic equilibrium model for environmental markets that allows us to study the characteristic properties of emission permit prices induced by the design of today’s cap-and-trade systems. We characterize emission permits as highly nonlinear contingent claims on economy-wide emissions and reveal their hybrid nature between investment and consumption assets. Our model makes predictions about the dynamics and volatility structure of emission permit prices, the forward price curve, and the implications for option pricing in this market. Empirical evidence from existing emissions markets shows that the model explains the stylized facts of emission permit prices and related derivatives.

The growing share of renewables paired with their intermittent nature introduces significant new challenges for market participants along the value-chain in power markets. Taking the view of an owner of such a physical renewable asset we showcase the management of the associated stochastic production risks in Germany, one of the most dynamic electricity markets and the largest producer of renewable energy in the EU-28. We find that unhedged renewable portfolios are very risky and existing vanilla derivatives are poor hedges. New exotic quantity-related weather contracts proposed by major energy exchanges (EEX) show a lot of potential but are still very illiquid. Their hedging performance is heavily driven by the market wide renewable generation portfolio which, in its current state, favors specific regions. In the long-run price-related derivatives will transform into more useful hedging instruments due to the growing importance of renewables in the formation of wholesale market prices.

Theoretical models suggest that the relation of speculators’ capital and market liquidity is highly nonlinear. Changes in capital only marginally affect liquidity when capital is available abundantly, but have a large effect when capital is scarce. In this paper, we confirm this relation within a regime-switching model using three broad measures of German bond market liquidity. We then analyze how the term structure of illiquidity premiums of German agency bonds is related to intermediaries’ capital and foreign flows. Illiquidity premiums are related to both variables only in the stress regime. The effect of intermediaries’ capital is most strongly pronounced at the short end of the term structure. In contrast, flows into and out of the illiquid bond market segment constitute a level effect as they are related to illiquidity premiums of all maturities.

In the literature, there is no consensus on a common approach to measure bond liquidity. This paper is the first to comprehensively compare all commonly employed liquidity measures based on intraday and daily data for the U.S. corporate bond market. We find that high-frequency measures based on intraday data are very strongly correlated, implying that previous results should be robust regarding the chosen measure. Most low-frequency proxies based on daily data generally also measure transaction costs well. However, three proxies clearly take the lead: Corwin and Schultz's (2012) high-low spread estimator, Roll's (1984) measure, and Hasbrouck's (2009) Gibbs measure.

This paper sheds new light on higher-order price risks in crude oil markets. A model-free analysis reveals that crude oil variance risk behaves fundamentally different from variance risk in equity markets. Most importantly, a skewness swap is no valid hedge for a variance swap and investors fear large price jumps in both directions. A model-based assessment confirms this and reveals that while stochastic volatility is important to capture the statistical properties such as volatility clusters and time-varying variance swap rates, only jump risk seems to be priced with a premium. Empirical evidence from a pricing and hedging exercise confirms these findings.

We analyze the impact of market frictions on the trading volume and liquidity premia of finite-maturity assets when investors differ in their trading needs. Our equilibrium model generates a clientele effect (frequently trading investors hold only short-term assets) and predicts i) a hump-shaped relation between trading volume and maturity, ii) lower trading volumes of older compared with younger assets, iii) an increasing liquidity term structure from ask prices, iv) a decreasing or U-shaped liquidity term structure from bid prices, and v) spillovers of liquidity from short-term to long-term maturities. Empirical tests for U.S. corporate bonds support our theoretical predictions.

We investigate the term structure of bond market illiquidity premia and show that the term structure varies greatly over time. Short and long end are strictly separated suggesting that different economic factors drive different parts of the term structure. We propose a stylized theoretical model which implies that current trading needs of investors determine the short end. The long-term risk of being forced to liquidate bond positions determines the long end. Empirical evidence supports these predictions. While short-term liquidation risk captured by asset market volatilities drives the short end, the long end depends on the long-term economic outlook.