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The dynamics between five-year US Treasury bonds and interest rate swaps are examined using bivariate threshold autoregressive (BTAR) models to determine the drivers of spread changes and the nature of the lead–lag relation between the two instruments. This model is able to identify the economic – or threshold – value that market participants consider significant before realigning their portfolios. Specifically, three different regimes are identified: when the swap spread in the previous week is either high or low, the Treasury bond market leads the swap market. However, when the swap spread is low, none of the markets leads each other. Thus, yield movements are shown to be governed by the direction and magnitude of the change in the swap spread, which in turn provides an economic insight into the rebalancing between swap and bond portfolios.

This study examines the response of Australian interest rate swap spreads to the arrival of macroeconomic news information during the economic expansion and contraction periods. We find that the impact of news announcements on swap spread change differs and largely depends on the state of the economy. The unexpected inflation rate is the only news released that has significant impact on swap spreads across all maturities during contractions and remains the important news announcement throughout the business cycles, while the unanticipated unemployment rate tends to be more relevant to 10-year swap and the unanticipated change in money supply tends to be more relevant to 4- and 7-year swaps during expansions. We also find shocks from these news surprises appear to have significant impact on the conditional volatility of the swap spread change during both economic phases. The macroeconomic shocks in general are negatively related to the conditional volatility of the swap spread change, suggesting that the newsworthy announcements tend to reduce uncertainty on the news announcement days in the swap market during expansion and contraction periods.

This case study examines the controversial practice by the Commonwealth of Australia during the period 1988–2002 of using currency swaps as part of its debt management strategy. Although the strategy provided a positive return overall, the impact of currency swap usage created significant year-by-year variations in returns, which posed a risk to debt interest and financing requirements. This suggests that the risk limits imposed on this strategy were both inappropriate and insufficient. Nonetheless, these findings provide insights into how such a policy could best be implemented given recent proposals (OECD, 2007) for derivatives use by public debt managers.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the rule recently published by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission that establishes a timetable for the mandatory clearing of interest rate and credit default swaps through a clearinghouse.

The paper discusses the structure of cleared trades in swaps, the classes of interest rate and credit default swaps that are subject to mandatory clearing under the CFTC's new rule and the affirmative and negative specifications for each class, the phased approach adopted by the CFTC for the mandatory clearing compliance schedule, and the end‐user and inter‐affiliate exemptions from the mandatory clearing requirement.

“Centralized clearing,” a process in which bilaterally negotiated trades of derivatives have to be given up to a centralized clearinghouse, is a cornerstone of the new global regulatory system for derivatives. Its proponents argue that centralized clearing will help to mitigate systemic risk by helping counterparties identify and net positions. The paper outlines the clearing rules in the USA for interest rate and credit default swaps.

The paper provides expert guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

The five-, 10-, and 20-year yields of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) co-move with the six- and 12-month basis swap rates under the quantitative and qualitative easing policy regime introduced by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). The 10- and 20-year JGB yields are in a one-to-one relationship with the six- and 12-month basis swap rates. A cheaper yen gives foreign investors strong incentives to buy 10- and 20-year JGBs under the quantitative and qualitative easing policy regime. A cheaper yen also gives foreign investors some incentives to buy five-year JGBs under the same regime. However, JGB yield does not co-move with basis swap rate under the negative interest rate policy regime. After the BOJ introduced the negative interest rate policy, the trend observed under the quantitative and qualitative easing policy regime changed.

Liquidity risk, i.e., the likelihood that a swap can be “sold” (i.e., assigned) may affect swap prices. This article addresses the importance of liquidity risk as a factor in the valuation of swaps, which are subject to default risk. The author presents a model for pricing these swaps by incorporating a proxy for liquidity risk. Using the model, the author finds that the effects of liquidity risk may partially offset the effects of default risk.

Interest rate derivatives (IRDs) are the essential components of financial risk management and are used across various industry sectors. The objective is to analyze the differences in approach to managing interest rate risks between the Indian corporates that execute IRDs and the ones that do not.

Interest rate fluctuations require Indian corporates to hedge their exposures in foreign currency interest rates. This is all the more true for mid-sized corporates because of their balance sheet exposures. Additionally, they may not have the resources to formulate risk management policies. This paper analyzes data collected from financial statements of a diverse set of companies that use IRD and helps in formulating such a strategy.

The results indicate significant differences for some of the parameters like information asymmetry and agency cost between users and non-users of IRDs. The study further suggests causality between users of derivatives and parameters like size, growth and debt.

The study compares users and non-users of IRDs, thereby identifying factors unique to users of IRDs. It also studies causality relations which explain the motivation to do IRDs. Thus, it enables risk managers to use this as a reference point to decide on their strategies.

While there are multiple studies across geographies and sectors including commercial banks in India on the usage of interest rate swaps, this study focuses on Indian mid-tier corporates. Furthermore, the study distinguishes between users and non-users based on financial parameters, which in turn would provide a framework for decision-hedging strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate volatility spillovers across the interest rate swap markets of the G7 economies, and then the authors investigate whether spillovers of swap markets contain useful information to explain subsequent stock price movements.

This study uses the short- and long-term swap spread volatility of the G7 countries to explore the spillover effects of international swap markets, and then investigates the relationship between swap and stock markets. The authors use the generalized VAR approach suggested by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) to study spillovers of international swap markets. The Granger-causality tests are employed to examine the linkage of interest rate swap and stock markets.

This paper shows that a moderate spillover effect exists for the short- and long-term swap markets. Moreover, the results show that the short- and long-term swap markets of France and Germany have a larger impact on other countries’ swap markets than that of other countries’ swap markets on the French and German swap markets. Finally, the results indicate that the total volatility spillovers for the long-term swap markets have a larger influence on the total volatility spillover index of stock markets and the global stock market volatility than that of the short-term swap markets.

Prior literature has used impulse response and variance decomposition analyses to investigate international swap markets linkages. However, the results depend on the ordering of variables. This study uses the framework of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) to overcome the ordering issue, and thus the authors can compute directional spillovers. This paper is the first study to explore the linkage of the total volatility spillover of swap markets and the stock markets.

This study contributes to the literature on local administrations' debt and attempts to answer the following research questions: (1) What effects do swaps produce on regions' debt? (2) Have swaps been used to finance discretionary debt?

The paper investigates the debt burden as influenced by economic, financial and political variables and forces with panel data techniques, and tests whether swaps have been used to financing debt due to unfunded expenditures.

Panel data results of 15 Italian regions over the 2007–2014 period shows that regions with higher debt exhibited a higher interest rate exposure and have employed derivatives hoping to counterbalance the reduced resources received from the central state, in line with other European countries' experience (i.e. France and Greece).

The scarcity of official data and information on swaps has limited the empirical investigations in the literature but did not reduce the losses of local administrations.

This study creates the first database on swaps purchased by Italian regions to investigate their impact on their debt. Results show that highly indebted regions with reduced funds from the central state and diminished local resources are more likely to use swaps to fund their debt. Italian regions heavily depended on long-term debt to finance their non-healthcare services, rather than current revenues; swaps have been used to finance discretionary (non-healthcare) debt.