Background: The financial crisis of 2007-2010 had a massive impact on the financial markets worldwide. The crisis was partly blamed on the credit derivatives collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. These instruments were used to create leverage and speculation, which led to uncertainty in the financial system worldwide. There has been no recent documentation of how credit derivatives are used in Swedish banks, and what risks and opportunities they bring along. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the use of credit derivatives in Swedish banks, what benefits and risks they may generate and how the recent financial crisis has affected their use. Research Method: This is a qualitative multiple case study which uses an inductive approach. The study covers four cases, three of the largest Swedish commercial banks, and a bank that specializes on international financing. Seven people working in different fields in these banks have been interviewed. Conclusions: Credit derivatives are mostly used for hedging in Swedish banks, which mainly involves the use of credit default swaps, and sometimes iTraxx. Purely speculative trades are rare. The risks that arise are mainly due to lack of transparency in OTC trading, and abusive use of these instruments. Credit derivatives greatly facilitate risk management in banks. Regulations have increased since the financial crisis and the demand for more complex products greatly decreased.

Credit derivative market has experienced an exponential growth during the last 10 years with credit default swap (CDS) as an undoubted leader within this group. CDS contract is a bilateral agreement where the seller of the financial instrument provides the buyer the right to get reimbursed in case of the default in exchange for a continuous payment expressed as a CDS spread multiplied by the notional amount of the underlying debt. Originally invented to transfer the credit risk from the risk-averse investor to that one who is more prone to take on an additional risk, recently the instrument has been actively employed by the speculators betting on the financial health of the underlying obligation. It is believed that CDS contributed to the recent turmoil on financial markets and served as a weapon of mass destruction exaggerating the systematic risk. However, the latest attempts to curb the destructive force of the credit derivative for the market by means of enhancing the regulation over the instrument, bringing it on the stock-exchange and solving the transparency issue might approve CDS in the face of investor who seeks to diminish the risk of his financial portfolio. In our thesis we provide empirical evidence of CDS ability to fulfil the diversification function in the portfolio of such credit sensitive claims as bonds and stocks. Our data for the empirical analysis consist of 12 European companies whose debt underlies the most frequently traded single-name CDS with the maturity of 5 years. Through multivariate vector autoregressive models we have tested the intertemporal relation between stock returns, CDS and bond spreads changes as well as the magnitude of this relation depending on the stock market state.   The results we have achieved for our sample are the following: 1) stock returns are mainly negatively related to the CDS and bond spread changes; 2) stock returns are the least affected by both credit spread changes, whereas changes in bond spreads are the best explained by the stock and CDS market movements; 3) the strength of the relation between three variables differs over the time: the relationship between stock returns and CDS spreads is the most dominant during the pre and post-crisis periods, while during the financial crisis time the relation between stock returns and bond spread changes as well as that of between both credit spreads comes to the foreground.   The above described relations between the three markets serve as a proof of the possibility to work out diversification strategies employing CDS. During the time of turbulence on the markets the investor may exert bigger diversification gains with the help of CDS. Thus, in spite of all the recent blame of the instrument from the investor perspective it is still remains one of the sources of profit.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, l'industrie du service informatique s'est métamorphosée afin de répondre à des besoins client croissants en termes de disponibilité, de performance ou de capacité de stockage des systèmes informatisés. Afin de faire face à ces demandes, les hébergeurs d'infrastructures ont naturellement adopté le partage de systèmes où les charges de travail de différents clients sont exécutées simultanément. Cette technique, mutualisant les ressources à disposition d'un système entre les utilisateurs, permet aux hébergeurs de réduire le coût de maintenance de leurs infrastructures, mais pose des problèmes d'interférence de performance et d'équité d'accès aux ressources. Nous désignons par le terme systèmes partagés best-effort les systèmes dont la gestion de ressources est centrée autour d'une maximisation de l'usage des ressources à disposition, tout en garantissant une répartition équitable entre les différents utilisateurs. Dans ce travail, nous soulignons la possibilité pour un utilisateur abusif d'attaquer les ressources d'une plateforme partagée afin de réduire de manière significative la qualité de service fournie aux autres utilisateurs concurrents. Le manque de métriques génériques aux différentes ressources, ainsi que le compromis naturel entre équité et optimisation des performances forment les causes principales des problèmes rencontrés dans ces systèmes. Nous introduisons le temps d'utilisation comme métrique générique de consommation des ressources, métrique s'adaptant aux différentes ressources gérées par les systèmes partagés best-effort. Ceci nous amène à la spécification de couches de contrôles génériques, transparentes et automatisées d'application de politiques d'équité garantissant une utilisation maximisée des ressources régulées. Notre prototype, implémenté au sein du noyau Linux, nous permet d'évaluer l'apport de notre approche pour la régulation des surcharges d'utilisation mémoire. Nous observons une amélioration significative de la performance d'applications typiques des systèmes partagés best-effort en temps de contention mémoire. De plus, notre technique borne l'impact d'applications abusives sur d'autres applications légitimes concurrentes, puisque l'incertitude sur les durées d'exécution est naturellement amoindrie.

由於交換合約為店頭市場交易，故其違約風險的考量為一重要因素。本文依據Wang and Liao（2003）對於權益交換的研究，以及Hübner（2001）對於信用風險的設定，將之結合，在完全市場的假設下，不考慮交易成本以及賦稅影響下，推導出考慮信用風險後的一般化權益交換評價模型，對於各類型的權益交換評價，只需將本文模型假設簡化即可運用。而依據本文推導結果在跨通貨的權益交換模型中，較無跨通貨的權益交換模型多了一個匯率風險調整項，另外在考慮信用風險之後，則會再多出一信用風險調整項。

This paper empirically explores how the introduction of Credit Default Swap (CDS) trading affects firm systematic risk. By treating the introduction as an event study and imploring propensity score matching and difference-in-differences analysis, this research finds that firm exposure to market risk increases after the introduction of CDS instruments, controlling for higher debt levels. These findings change, however, in times of financial crisis when the impact of CDS trading actually reduces systematic risk. These results show that CDS introduction enables a firm to more dramatically change its exposure to systematic risk in comparison to its counterpart to reflect market conditions.

一籃子信用違約交換評價上並不存在公式解，一般是用蒙地卡羅模擬來推估商品價格，然而，因為蒙地卡羅執行速度較慢，往往會需要能夠大規模運行的計算資源以及高成本的硬體，為了減少成本和提高蒙地卡羅的效率就必須從其演算法改進，於是本文利用Chiang et al.(2007)所提出的一籃子信用違約交換演算法來提升一籃子信用違約交換的評價效率，但是該方法採用多元常態分佈假設下的Factor gaussian copula模型進行評價，並不符合市場實際金融市場資料具有不對稱的偏態現象，尤其對未來的環境危機發生的頻率不斷增加，極端事件可能出現的機會也越來越高，基於此問題，本文將Factor t copula、Factor clayton copula、Factor NIG copula以及Modify factor NIG copula與重要性抽樣演算法結合來提昇商品評價的準確度，並且分析各模型與該演算法結合的效果。

Univ., Diss.--Genève, 2007.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität St. Gallen, 2009.

Η τρέχουσα χρηματοπιστωτική κρίση, έδωσε τη δυνατότητα σε μεγάλο αριθμό ερευνητών να προσπαθησουν να ερμηνεύσουν συγκεκριμένες διαδικασίες που εμφανίζονται σε αυτή την κατάσταση. Ενδιαφέρον αποτελεί η σχέση μεταξύ κρατικών ομολόγων και των CDS. Η ακόλουθη εργασία θα προσπαθήσει μέσα από θεωρητική και εμπειρική ανάλυση να μελετήσει το ασφάλιστρο κινδύνου μεταξύ των δύο μέσων με τη χρήση της θεωρητικών οικονομετρικών μεθόδων. / The current financial crisis, has enabled a large number of researchers trying to interpret specific processes that occur in it. Such interest is the relationship between government bonds and CDS. The following study will attempt to theoretical and empirical study of co-movements of the spread between the two instruments with the use of theoretical econometric methods.

The thesis deals with bubbles in financial markets, causes these bubbles and the ant model. The aim is to reveal the causes of bubbles in financial markets. Researched bubbles are dot-com, mortgages and crypto-currencies. In the first teoretical part are described the financial markets, investment instruments, theory of the business cycle, investment analysis and historical speculative bubbles. In the second practical part are identified the causes examined speculative bubbles. In the third part are summarized the results of the practical part.