This dissertation consists of two papers. The first paper examines the propagation of firm-specific shocks as well as market-wide shocks between 1995-2003 using Treasury and corporate bond market data. It then tests the implications of previously proposed models of contagion. I find little support for the industry and counterparty structure hypothesis, suggesting that fundamentals do not generate contagion. Consistent with the information transmission, rebalancing, and liquidity-shock hypotheses, I find evidence of flight to quality during the event periods. However, in contrast to the prediction of the liquidity-shock channel, the corporate bond market, on average, seems to be more liquid during event periods (evidenced by higher trading volume, trading frequency, and mean bond age). Furthermore, there are no significant changes in the trading of assets with the low transaction costs, which is contrary to the rebalancing theory. These findings are more in favor of the correlated information channel as a means of inducing contagion.The second paper examines the effect of liquidity on corporate bond prices using the newly formed TRACE data set. In the spirit of Acharya and Pedersen's (2005) liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model (LCAPM), I examine the impact of multiple sources of risk on corporate bond prices. The results do not lend strong support for the existence of liquidity risk in the corporate bond market or for the LCAPM, especially when liquidity is captured using the trading frequency, trading volume, and turnover. Contrary to the predictions of the LCAPM, more illiquid portfolios do not have higher values for the three liquidity betas; betas that capture the commonality in liquidity with the market, the sensitivity in returns with the market-wide liquidity, and the liquidity sensitivity with the market returns. Furthermore, after running cross-sectional regressions I do not find strong evidence either for the validity of the model or that liquidity risk does matter for the corporate bond prices.

[pt] Este trabalho analisará uma das maiores emissões de bonds de todos os tempos, a emissão de USD 11 bilhões de bonds da Petrobras que aconteceu em maio de 2013. Além de ser a maior transação da história para países emergentes até hoje, a emissão também foi feita em hora oportuna quando a Petrobras aproveitou uma excelente janela e mercado para fazer a emissão. A repercussão da transação também foi excelente tendo sido veiculada em vários meios de comunicação. O trabalho relatará do anúncio, precificação e lançamento da emissão que foi muito bem recebida pelo mercado financeiro. / [en] This paper will examine one of the largest bond issue ever, the USD 11 billion Petrobras bonds issue by Petrobras, the brazilian oil company, held in May 2013. Besides being the largest transaction in history for emerging countries until today, the issue has also been taken in proper time when Petrobras took an excellent market window to make the issue. The effect of the transaction was also great having been conveyed in various media vehicles. The work will speak with the market s announce, pricing and launch the issue which was very well received by the financial market.

New information has an important role in asset price movement. This paper investigates the role of scheduled domestic news releases on the Australian government bond market. Specifically, it examines the impact of pre-announced macroeconomic news release on bond futures markets and associated market volatility. Furthermore, an EGARCH-in-mean model is used to determine the asymmetric response of the conditional volatility to either news release or unexpected changes of some news content. The results indicate that excess return of bond futures in the research period was leptokurtic (fat-tailed) with time-varying conditional heteroscedasticity. Day of the week volatility was also present but with a declining pace. It’s generally attributed to the release dates of announcements and information flow from offshore markets. Although announcement effects to the bond futures market were significant, they depended on the type of maturity. Finally, results from EGARCH indicate that fundamental lagging indicators such as CPI and GDP are always important in explaining the impact of news release on market volatility, whereas the unemployment rate has a reasonable role in announcement surprises. The data suggest the following conclusion: investors are seriously concerned with news releases on macroeconomic variables they can feasibly forecast because they are always fundamental and provide a partial indication of the future economy. Surprises from news content are also critical to investors because some important variables can only be forecasted with limited accuracy. Therefore, deviation from anticipated outcomes in the actual content also causes significant market movement. / Thesis(M.Comm.)-- School of Commerce, 2007.

Opbrengskoerse van vasterentedraende effekte verander as gevolg van veranderings in vraag en aanbod op die kapitaalmark. Die veranderinge in opbrengskoerse bei'nvloed die pryse van vasterentedraende effekte, asook van die opsies op hierdie effekte en stel beleggers in hierdie instrumente bloot aan beleggingsrisiko. Hierdie studie ondersoek die uitwerking van veranderings in die opbrengskoerse op die pryse van vasterentedraende eff ekte en opsies indien geen verskansing teen beleggingsrisiko toegepas word nie. Verder word verskillende verskansingstegnieke vergelyk ten einde te bepaal welke tegniek beleggingsrisiko die mees doeltreffendste kan beperk. Die studie toon aan dat dit wenslik is om beleggings en vasterentedraende effekte en opsies teen beleggingsrisiko te verskans. Empiriese toetse is op verskeie tegnieke gedoen om te bepaal watter verskansingstegnieke beleggingsrisiko die doeltreffendste kan beperk. Die gevolgtrekking is dat beleggingsrisiko inderdaad doeltreffend beperk kan word. Vir elke posisie in vasterentedraende en opsies is 'n spesifieke verskansingstegniek gei'dentifiseer om sodanige posisie doeltreffend in terme van winsgewendheid te verskans. / Yield on fixed interest bearing securities change as a result of changes in the supply and demand in the capital market. These changes in the yield influence the prices of fixed interest securities, as well as options on fixed interest securities and expose .investors in these instruments to investment risk. This study investigates the effect of changes in yield on the prices of fixed interest securities and options if no hedging against investment risk is instituted. Different techniques are compared to establish which technique will restrict investment risk effectively. This study shows that it is desirable to hedge investments in fixed interest securities and options against investment risk. Empirical tests were conducted on a variety of techniques to establish which technique would restrict investment risk effectively. The conclusion is that investment risk can be limited. A specific technique has been identified for each position in fixed interest securities and options that can hedge such a position effectively against investment risk in terms of profitability. / Business Management / MCOM (Bedryfsekonomie)

Lai, Kwok Tung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-66). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.9 / Chapter 3 --- Preliminary Analysis of Data --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1 --- Data --- p.17 / Chapter 3.2 --- Preliminary Analysis of Unspanned Stochastic Volatility --- p.20 / Chapter 4 --- A Jump-Diffusion Model for Federal Funds Target Rate --- p.23 / Chapter 4.1 --- Model Specification --- p.23 / Chapter 4.2 --- Estimation Result --- p.31 / Chapter 5 --- Pricing and Hedging Performance of Interest Rate Derivatives --- p.34 / Chapter 5.1 --- Pricing Performance of Interest Rate Cap --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2 --- Hedging Performance of Interest Rate Caplet --- p.38 / Chapter 5.3 --- Hedging Performance of Interest Rate Straddle --- p.42 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.49 / Figures --- p.51 / Tables --- p.55 / Bibliography --- p.64

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (May 2, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Opbrengskoerse van vasterentedraende effekte verander as gevolg van veranderings in vraag en aanbod op die kapitaalmark. Die veranderinge in opbrengskoerse bei'nvloed die pryse van vasterentedraende effekte, asook van die opsies op hierdie effekte en stel beleggers in hierdie instrumente bloot aan beleggingsrisiko. Hierdie studie ondersoek die uitwerking van veranderings in die opbrengskoerse op die pryse van vasterentedraende eff ekte en opsies indien geen verskansing teen beleggingsrisiko toegepas word nie. Verder word verskillende verskansingstegnieke vergelyk ten einde te bepaal welke tegniek beleggingsrisiko die mees doeltreffendste kan beperk. Die studie toon aan dat dit wenslik is om beleggings en vasterentedraende effekte en opsies teen beleggingsrisiko te verskans. Empiriese toetse is op verskeie tegnieke gedoen om te bepaal watter verskansingstegnieke beleggingsrisiko die doeltreffendste kan beperk. Die gevolgtrekking is dat beleggingsrisiko inderdaad doeltreffend beperk kan word. Vir elke posisie in vasterentedraende en opsies is 'n spesifieke verskansingstegniek gei'dentifiseer om sodanige posisie doeltreffend in terme van winsgewendheid te verskans. / Yield on fixed interest bearing securities change as a result of changes in the supply and demand in the capital market. These changes in the yield influence the prices of fixed interest securities, as well as options on fixed interest securities and expose .investors in these instruments to investment risk. This study investigates the effect of changes in yield on the prices of fixed interest securities and options if no hedging against investment risk is instituted. Different techniques are compared to establish which technique will restrict investment risk effectively. This study shows that it is desirable to hedge investments in fixed interest securities and options against investment risk. Empirical tests were conducted on a variety of techniques to establish which technique would restrict investment risk effectively. The conclusion is that investment risk can be limited. A specific technique has been identified for each position in fixed interest securities and options that can hedge such a position effectively against investment risk in terms of profitability. / Business Management / MCOM (Bedryfsekonomie)

In the thesis, we investigate whether hedge fund managers have liquidity timing skills in the fixed income market, foreign exchange market and commodity market, respectively. Managers with the liquidity timing skills can strategically adjust hedge funds exposure to the target financial market based on their forecasts about the future changes in market liquidity. We find empirical evidence that hedge funds in certain categories have the skills to time the liquidity levels in the fixed income market, foreign exchange market and commodity market. We conduct a range of robustness tests, which show that hedge funds still exhibit liquidity timing skills after controlling for the factors that may affect timing ability. In particular, our findings are robust to the usage of leverage, funding constraints, investor redemption restrictions, hedge funds trades on market liquidity, financial crisis, hedge fund data biases, market return and volatility timing, liquidity risk factor, systematic stale pricing and option factors. We also conduct bootstrap analysis to ensure the results are not dependent on the normality assumption. Our investigation is helpful to understand the importance of market liquidity to hedge funds professional portfolio management.

O objetivo deste trabalho é estudar a formação do preço dos títulos de dívida corporativa brasileiros emitidos no exterior, essencialmente eurobonds, buscando identificar quais os fatores, além do seu rating, que determinam a formação do spread pelo risco pago por esses títulos no momento de emissão. Busca-se também tecer uma discussão comparativa entre os resultados auferidos pela pesquisa, e os resultados identificados em pesquisas anteriores para dados de debêntures brasileiras domésticas. O estudo foi desenvolvido por meio de regressões lineares múltiplas, que buscam identificar os fatores, levantados através de pesquisa bibliográfica, que influenciam o spread pelo risco no momento de emissão do título. A base de dados foi compilada através dos portais Bloomberg e Cbonds, e de prospectos de emissão, e contou ao final com 103 observações distribuídas em uma janela de 2002 até 2012. Os resultados indicam que os principais fatores determinantes do spread na emissão dos bonds são: a nota de rating da emissão, o desempenho recente do S&P500 e o desempenho do PIB brasileiro em relação ao desempenho do PIB global, no mesmo período. Um resultado interessante identificado é que o índice S&P500 é mais relevante na precificação dos eurobonds brasileiros do que o Ibovespa, o que indica que os investidores, ao decidir investir em um título corporativo brasileiro, possivelmente estão mais interessados no risco desse ativo, especificamente, do que no risco-Brasil genericamente. Outras variáveis foram avaliadas, como maturidade, frequência no pagamento de cupons, volume da emissão, risco-país do Brasil (medido pelo EMBI+ do JPMorgan), desempenho do dólar e Ibovespa. Os resultados da pesquisa, em sua maioria, foram alinhados com os resultados identificados por Paiva (2011) para as debêntures brasileiras emitidas no Brasil, que também encontrou relevância para as variáveis rating e desempenho da economia, entre outras. / This objective of this dissertation is to analyze the pricing of corporate debt securities issued abroad, essentially eurobonds, in order to identify which factors, beyond its rating, that determine the spread for risk paid by these securities at the moment of issue. As secondary objectives, this dissertation also aims to compare, through a qualitative discussion, the conclusions reached by this research, and the results identified in previous research that tested Brazilian domestic bond data. The method applied in the study was multiple linear regression, in order to identify the factors that influence significantly the spread for risk at the time of issue of the bond. The previous literature research that was held indicated which variables should be tested. The database was compiled through Bloomberg, Cbonds portal, and issues prospectus, and the final database was comprised of 103 observations from 2002 to 2012. The results indicate that the main determinants of the spread in the issuance of bonds are: rating of the issue, the recent performance of the S&P500 index and the performance of the Brazilian GDP in relation to the global GDP in the same period. An interesting result was that the S&P500 index is more relevant in the pricing of Brazilian eurobonds than the Bovespa index, which indicates that players, when deciding to invest in a Brazilian bond, are possibly more interested in the risk of this asset, specifically, than in the Brazil risk, overall. Other variables were tested, such as maturity, coupon payment frequency, volume of issue, the spread for Brazilian risk (measured by the JPMorgan EMBI+), dollar performance and Ibovespa. The survey results, in general, were in accordance with the outcomes identified by Paiva (2011) for the debentures issued in Brazil, who also identified the variables for rating and performance of the economy as relevant to the pricing of the debentures, among other results

This thesis comprises three essays that explore several theoretical and empirical features of affine term structure models. In the first essay, we focus on the ability of continuous-time affine term structure models to capture time variability in the second conditional moment. Using data on US Treasury yields, we conclude that affine term structure models are much better at extracting time-series volatility from the cross-section of yields than argued in the literature. These models have nonetheless difficulty capturing volatility dynamics at the short end of the maturity spectrum, perhaps indicating some form of segmentation between long-maturity and short-maturity bonds. These results are robust to the choice of sample period, interpolation method and estimation method. In the second essay, we propose the use of the unscented Kalman filter technique for the estimation of affine term structure models using non-linear instruments. We focus on swap rates and show that the unscented Kalman filter leads to important reductions in bias and gains in precision. The use of the unscented Kalman filter results in substantial improvements in out-of-sample forecasts. Our findings suggest that the unscented Kalman filter may prove to be a good approach for a number of problems in fixed income pricing in which the relationship between the state vector and the observations is nonlinear, such as the estimation of term structure models using interest rate derivatives or coupon bonds, and the estimation of quadratic term structure models. The third essay provides a tractable framework for pricing defaultable securities with recovery risk. Pricing solutions are explored for a large family of discrete-time affine processes and a five-factor Gaussian model is estimated on BBB and B Standard and Poor's yield indices. This rich econometric setup allows the model to simultaneously capture two important stylized facts of defaultable securities: The positive correlation between the loss given default and the intensity of default, and the negative correlation between the intensity of default and the risk-free interest rate.