Stefan Avdjiev

CoCos: A Primer

Contingent convertible capital instruments (CoCos) are hybrid capital securities that absorb losses when the capital of the issuing bank falls below a certain level. In this article, we go over the structure of CoCos, trace the evolution of their issuance, and examine their pricing in primary and secondary markets. CoCo issuance is primarily driven by their potential to satisfy regulatory capital requirements. The bulk of the demand for CoCos has come from small investors, while institutional investors have been relatively restrained so far. The spreads of CoCos over other subordinated debt greatly depend on their two main design characteristics - the trigger level and the loss absorption mechanism. CoCo spreads are more correlated with the spreads of other subordinated debt than with CDS spreads and equity prices.

News driven business cycles and data on asset prices in estimated DSGE models

The existing literature on estimated structural News Driven Business Cycle (NDBC) models has focused almost exclusively on macroeconomic data and has largely ignored asset prices. In this paper, we present evidence that including data on asset prices in the estimation of a structural NDBC model dramatically affects inference about the main sources of business cycle fluctuations. Combined with the large body of evidence that asset price movements reflect changes in expectations of future developments in the economy, our results imply that data on asset prices should always be used in the estimation of structural NDBC models because they contain information that cannot be obtained by using solely macroeconomic data.

Credit Growth, Monetary Policy, and Economic Activity in a Three-Regime TVAR Model

We employ a Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) methodology in order to examine the nonlinear nature of the interactions among credit market conditions, monetary policy and economic activity. We depart from the existing literature on the subject along two dimensions. First, we focus on a model in which the relevant threshold variable describes the state of economic activity rather than credit market conditions. Second, in contrast to the existing TVAR literature, which concentrates exclusively on single-threshold models, we allow for the presence of a second threshold, which is overwhelmingly supported by all relevant statistical tests. Our results indicate that the dynamics of the interactions among credit market conditions, monetary policy and economic activity change considerably as the economy moves from one phase of the business cycle to another and that single-threshold TVAR models are too restrictive to fully capture the nonlinear nature of those interactions. The impact of most shocks tends to be largest during periods of subpar economic activity and smallest during times of moderate economic growth. By contrast, credit risk shocks have the largest impact when output growth is considerably above its long-term trend.

Stochastic Volatility, Long Run Risks, and Aggregate Stock Market Fluctuations

What are the main drivers of fluctuations in the aggregate US stock market? In this paper, we attempt to resolve the long-lasting debate surrounding this question by designing and solving a consumption-based asset pricing model which incorporates stochastic volatility, long-run risks in consumption and dividends, and Epstein-Zin preferences. Utilizing Bayesian MCMC techniques, we estimate the model by fitting it to US data on the level of the aggregate US stock market, the short-term real risk-free interest rate, real consumption growth, and real dividend growth. Our results indicate that, over short and medium horizons, fluctuations in the level of the aggregate US stock market are mainly driven by changes in expected excess returns. Conversely, low frequency movements in the aggregate stock market are primarily driven by changes in the expected long-run growth rate of real dividends.

The Shifting Drivers of Global Liquidity (Presentation Slides)

Conference presentation on drivers and transmission of global liquidity.

CoCo Issuance and Bank Fragility

The promise of contingent convertible capital securities (CoCos) as a “bail-in�? solution has been the subject of considerable theoretical analysis and debate, but little is known about their effects in practice. In this paper, we undertake the first comprehensive empirical analysis of bank CoCo issues, a market segment that comprises over 730 instruments totaling

Non-Financial Corporations from Emerging Market Economies and Capital Flows

521 billion. Four main findings emerge: 1) The propensity to issue a CoCo is higher for larger and better-capitalized banks; 2) CoCo issues result in statistically significant declines in issuers’ CDS spreads, indicating that they generate risk-reduction benefits and lower costs of debt. This is especially true for CoCos that: i) convert into equity, ii) have mechanical triggers, iii) are classified as Additional Tier 1 instruments; 3) CoCos with only discretionary triggers do not have a significant impact on CDS spreads; 4) CoCo issues have no statistically significant impact on stock prices, except for principal write-down CoCos with a high trigger level, which have a positive effect.