Causes and hazards of the euro area sovereign debt crisis: Pure and fundamentals-based contagion

This paper tries to contribute to the understanding of sovereign debt crises' pattern by empirically investigating the determinants of the recent euro area crisis to assess if its transmission was due to “pure” or “fundamentalsbased” contagion. Using sovereign bond yield spreads with respect to...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Gómez-Puig, Marta, Sosvilla Rivero, Simón Javier
Format: article
Publication Date:2016
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/23601
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/23601
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:C35
C53
E44
F36
G15
Sovereign bond spreads
Contagion
Granger-causality
Time-varying approach
Euro area
Logit model.
Econometría (Economía)
Economía internacional
Macroeconomía
Mercados bursátiles y financieros
5302 Econometría
5310 Economía Internacional
5307.14 Teoría Macroeconómica
Description
Summary:This paper tries to contribute to the understanding of sovereign debt crises' pattern by empirically investigating the determinants of the recent euro area crisis to assess if its transmission was due to “pure” or “fundamentalsbased” contagion. Using sovereign bond yield spreads with respect to Germany for a sample of ten central and peripheral countries from January 1999 to December 2012, we firstly examine the dynamic evolution of Granger-causality within the 90 pairs of yield spreads in our sample to detect episodes of contagion (associated with episodes of significant intensification in causality). Secondly, we make use of a logit model to explore whether there is evidence of “pure contagion” or “fundamentals-based contagion”, by trying to determine which factors might have been behind the detected contagion episodes. Our results suggest that contagion episodes are concentrated just after the inception of the EMU and matching the Global Financial Crisis, yielding more accurate and sensible indicators than those obtained from DCC-GARCH models used in prior studies. Indeed, they preceded the outburst of the Global Financial Crisis (causality intensification is detected from March 2008), and reached a peak during January–May 2011. Furthermore, they underline the coexistence of “pure” and “fundamentals-based contagion” during the recent European debt crisis.