An empirical study on the correlation structure of credit spreads based on the dynamic and pair copula functions
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the correlation structure of the credit spreads.
Design/methodology/approach
The minimal spanning tree is used to find the risk center node and the basic correlation structure of the credit spreads. The dynamic copula and pair copula models are applied to capture the dynamic and non-linear correlation structure.
Findings
The authors take the enterprise bond with trading data from January 2013 to December 2013 as the research sample. The empirical study of minimum spanning tree shows that the credit risk of corporate bonds forms a network structure with a center node. Meanwhile, the correlation between credit spreads shows dynamic characteristics. Under the framework of dynamic copula, the lower tail dependence is less than the upper tail dependence, thus, in economic boom period, the dynamic correlation is more significant than in recession period. The authors also find that the centrality of credit risk network is not significant according to the pair copula and Granger causality test. The empirical study shows that the goodness-of-fit of D vine is superior to Canonical vine, and the Granger causality test additionally proves that the center node has influence on few other nodes in the risk network, thus the center node captured by the minimum spanning tree is a weak center node, and this characteristic of credit risk network indicates that the risk network of credit spreads is generated mostly by the external shocks rather than the internal risk contagion.
Originality/value
This paper provides new ideas for investors and researchers to analyze the credit risk correlation or contagion.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
JEL Classification — G20, G32
The authors are grateful to editors and the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions which greatly improved the previous version of the paper. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 71373072, no. 71503078), the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (no. 13YJCZH123), Hunan Natural Science Foundation (no. 14JJ3129) and the program for Science and Technology Innovative Research Team in Higher Educational Institutions of Hunan Province.
Citation
Luo, C., Li, M. and Ouyang, Z. (2016), "An empirical study on the correlation structure of credit spreads based on the dynamic and pair copula functions", China Finance Review International, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 284-303. https://doi.org/10.1108/CFRI-08-2015-0118
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited