We introduce a new measure of emerging market sovereign credit risk: the local currency credit spread, defined as the spread of local currency bonds over the synthetic local currency risk‐free rate constructed using cross‐currency swaps. We find that local currency credit spreads are positive and sizable. Compared with credit spreads on foreign‐currency‐denominated debt, local currency credit spreads have lower means, lower cross‐country correlations, and lower sensitivity to global risk factors. We discuss several major sources of credit spread differentials, including positively correlated credit and currency risk, selective default, capital controls, and various financial market frictions.

We find that deviations from the covered interest rate parity (CIP) condition imply large, persistent, and systematic arbitrage opportunities in one of the largest asset markets in the world. Contrary to the common view, these deviations for major currencies are not explained away by credit risk or transaction costs. They are particularly strong for forward contracts that appear on banks' balance sheets at the end of the quarter, pointing to a causal effect of banking regulation on asset prices. The CIP deviations also appear significantly correlated with other fixed income spreads and with nominal interest rates.