Using an innovative random regime shift detection methodology, we identify and confirm two distinct regime types in the dynamics of credit spreads: a level regime and a volatility regime. The level regime is long lived and shown to be linked to Federal Reserve policy and credit market conditions, whereas the volatility regime is short lived and, apart from recessionary periods, detected during major financial crises. Our methodology provides an independent way of supporting structural equilibrium models and points toward monetary and credit supply effects to account for the persistence of credit spreads and their predictive power over the business cycle.

This paper develops a high-frequency risk measure: the Liquidity-adjusted Intraday Value at Risk (LIVaR). Our objective is to explicitly consider the endogenous liquidity dimension associated with order size. By reconstructing the open Limit Order Book of Deutsche Börse, changes in the tick-by-tick (ex-ante) frictionless return and actual return are modeled jointly. The risk related to the ex-ante liquidity premium is then quantified. Our model can be used to identify the impact of ex-ante liquidity risk on total risk, and to provide an estimation of the VaR for the actual return at a point in time. In our sample, liquidity risk can account for up to 32% of total risk depending on order size.

We examine the long run performance of M&A transactions in the property–liability insurance industry. We specifically investigate whether such transactions create value for the bidders’ shareholders, and assess how corporate governance mechanisms, internal and external, affect such performance. Our results show that M&A create value in the long run as buy and hold abnormal returns are positive and significant after 3 years. While tender offers appear to be more profitable than mergers, our multivariate evidence does not support the conjecture that domestic transactions create more value than cross-border transactions. Furthermore, positive returns are significantly higher for frequent acquirers and in countries where investor protection is weaker. Internal corporate governance mechanisms, such as board independence, and CEO share ownership, are also significant determinants of the long run positive performance of bidders.

Empirical studies on credit spread determinants are predicated on the presence of a single-regime over the entire sample period and thus find limited explanatory power. A single-regime model hides the fact that explanatory variables take on different loadings across changing patterns in credit spreads. In a model with endogenous regimes for credit spreads or with monetary regimes, we find that market, default, and liquidity factors have superior explanatory power because of their interaction with the regime. Lower improvements are found when the regime is defined according to the credit supply regime or the NBER regimes (announced and official).

Road safety policies often use incentive mechanisms based on traffic violations to promote safe driving—for example, fines, experience rating, and point-record driver's licenses. We analyze the effectiveness of these mechanisms in promoting safe driving. We derive their theoretical properties with respect to contract time and accumulated demerit points. These properties are tested empirically with data from the Quebec public insurance plan. We find evidence of moral hazard, which means that drivers who accumulate demerit points become more careful because they are at risk of losing their license. An insurance rating scheme introduced in 1992 reduced the frequency of traffic violations by 15%. We use this result to derive monetary equivalents for traffic violations and license suspensions.

We examine the ability of observed macroeconomic factors and the possibility of changes in regime to explain the proportion of yield spreads caused by the risk of default in the context of a reduced form model. For this purpose, we extend the Markov-switching risk-free term structure model of Bansal and Zhou (2002) to the corporate bond setting and develop recursive formulas for default probabilities, risk-free and risky zero-coupon bond yields as well as credit default swap premia. The model is calibrated with consumption, inflation, risk-free yields and default data for Aa, A and Baa bonds from the 1987 to 2008 period. We find that our macroeconomic factors are linked with two out of three sharp increases in the spreads during this sample period, indicating that the spread variations can be related to macroeconomic undiversifiable risk.