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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 37 No. 2 2013

Modelling sovereign credit spreads with international macro-factors: The case of Brazil 1998–2009

Zhuoshi Liu1; Peter Spencer2

1 Bank of England · 2 University of York

Abstract

This paper develops a macro-finance model of the Brazilian economy and its sovereign debt markets that allows for domestic and international macroeconomic influences as well as swings in investor confidence. It finds significant evidence of common trends in the US and Brazilian economies and bond markets as well as spillover effects from US inflation and business cycles to the Brazilian economy. The US Fed Funds rate influences Brazilian sovereign spreads, as do Brazilian inflation and policy rates. The Brazilian confidence factor dominates the behavior of the spreads during periods of crisis and we find that it also has a powerful effect on the level and volatility of macroeconomic variables. These results suggest that the macro-finance approach could throw light upon the behavior of other economies that are troubled by sovereign risk.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.08.012
Volume
37
Issue
2
Pages
241-256
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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