We provide new empirical evidence that U.S. expected growth and consumption volatility are closely related to the strong comovement in sovereign spreads. We rationalize these findings in an equilibrium model with recursive utility for credit default swap (CDS) spreads. The framework links a reduced-form default process with country-specific sensitivity to expected growth and macroeconomic uncertainty. Exploiting the high-frequency information in the CDS term structure across 38 countries, we estimate the model and find parameters consistent with preference for early resolution of uncertainty. Our results confirm the existence of time-varying risk premia in sovereign spreads as compensation for exposure to common U.S. macroeconomic risk.

We explore the implications of ambiguity for the pricing of credit default swaps (CDSs). A model of heterogeneous investors with independent preferences for ambiguity and risk shows that, because CDS contracts are assets in zero net supply, the net credit risk exposure of the marginal investor determines the sign of the impact of ambiguity on CDS spreads. We find that ambiguity has an economically significant negative impact on CDS spreads, on average, suggesting that the marginal investor is a net buyer of credit protection. A 1-standard-deviation increase in ambiguity is estimated to decrease CDS spreads by approximately 6%.

Sovereign credit default swap quanto spreads tell us how financial markets view the interaction between a country’s likelihood of default and associated currency devaluations (the Twin Ds). A no-arbitrage model applied to the term structure of eurozone quanto spreads can isolate the Twin Ds and can gauge the associated risk premiums. Conditional on the occurrence of default, the true and risk-adjusted one-week probabilities of devaluation are 42% (2%) and 90% (55%) for the core (periphery) countries. The weekly risk premium for euro devaluation in case of default for the core (periphery) exceeds the regular currency premium by up to 18 (13) basis points.

We develop a capital structure model in which firms differ in their ability to adjust output prices. Firms with inflexible prices are more exposed to nominal and real shocks, leading to lower leverage, shorter debt maturity, higher cost of debt, tighter covenants, and greater precautionary cash holdings. Shocks to cash flow volatility raise the cost of debt more for firms with less pricing flexibility. We empirically confirm these predictions: Firms with inflexible prices experience significantly larger increases in credit spreads following monetary policy shocks and the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, especially when they face high preshock rollover risk.

We study how listing in multiple markets affects the dynamics between firms’ credit default swap (CDS) and stock returns. We find that cross-listing increases (1) the sensitivity of CDS to stock returns, (2) the integration of CDS with world equity and bond markets, and (3) the statistical synchronicity of CDS and stock prices. Our results are stronger for firms with greater media attention, analyst and CDS coverage, and Google search intensity and for listings in familiar markets. We suggest that a firm’s presence in global equity markets comes with an improvement in the credit-equity integration through a reduction of informational frictions. Received April 20, 2017; editorial decision February 12, 2019 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique setting in which to evaluate the importance of a country’s fiscal capacity in explaining the relation between economic growth shocks and sovereign default risk. For a sample of 30 developed countries, we find a positive and significant sensitivity of sovereign default risk to the intensity of the virus’s spread for fiscally constrained governments. Supporting the fiscal channel, we confirm the results for Eurozone countries and U.S. states, for which monetary policy can be held constant. Our analysis suggests that financial markets penalize sovereigns with low fiscal space, impairing their resilience to external shocks.

We quantify the impact of risk‐based and nonrisk‐based intermediary constraints (IC) on the term structure of covered interest rate parity (CIP) violations. Using a stochastic discount factor (SDF) inferred from interest rate swaps, we value currency derivatives. The wedge between model‐implied and observed derivative prices reflects the impact of nonrisk‐based IC because our SDF incorporates risk‐based IC. There is no wedge at short horizons, while the wedge accounts for 40% of long‐term CIP violations. Consistent with IC theory, the wedge correlates with the shadow cost of intermediary capital, and the SDF‐implied interest rate is a weighted average of collateralized and uncollateralized interest rates.