Contagion of Fear: Is the Impact of COVID-19 on Sovereign Risk Really Indiscriminate?

This paper investigates the impact of infectious diseases on the evolution of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads for a panel of 77 advanced and developing countries. Using annual data over the 2004-2020 period, we find that infectious-disease outbreaks have no discernible effect on CDS spre...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cevik, Serhan
Other Authors: Öztürkkal, Belma
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2020
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 03150nmm a2200601 u 4500
001 EB002081571
003 EBX01000000000000001221661
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 220928 ||| eng
020 |a 9781513561578 
100 1 |a Cevik, Serhan 
245 0 0 |a Contagion of Fear: Is the Impact of COVID-19 on Sovereign Risk Really Indiscriminate?  |c Serhan Cevik, Belma Öztürkkal 
260 |a Washington, D.C.  |b International Monetary Fund  |c 2020 
300 |a 22 pages 
651 4 |a South Africa 
653 |a COVID-19 
653 |a Health 
653 |a Energy: Demand and Supply 
653 |a Credit 
653 |a Oil prices 
653 |a Infectious & contagious diseases 
653 |a Finance 
653 |a Monetary economics 
653 |a Contingent Pricing 
653 |a Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit: General 
653 |a General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) 
653 |a Health and Fitness 
653 |a option pricing 
653 |a International Lending and Debt Problems 
653 |a Health Behavior 
653 |a Money 
653 |a International Financial Markets 
653 |a Futures Pricing 
653 |a Financial markets 
653 |a Emerging and frontier financial markets 
653 |a Financial services industry 
653 |a Credit default swap 
653 |a Prices 
653 |a Macroeconomics 
653 |a Business and Economics 
653 |a Diseases: Contagious 
653 |a Communicable diseases 
653 |a Money and Monetary Policy 
653 |a Finance: General 
700 1 |a Öztürkkal, Belma 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b IMF  |a International Monetary Fund 
490 0 |a IMF Working Papers 
028 5 0 |a 10.5089/9781513561578.001 
856 4 0 |u https://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2020/263/001.2020.issue-263-en.xml?cid=49903-com-dsp-marc  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 330 
520 |a This paper investigates the impact of infectious diseases on the evolution of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads for a panel of 77 advanced and developing countries. Using annual data over the 2004-2020 period, we find that infectious-disease outbreaks have no discernible effect on CDS spreads, after controlling for macroeconomic and institutional factors. However, our granular analysis using high-frequency (daily) data indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on market-implied sovereign default risk. This adverse effect appears to be more pronounced in advanced economies, which may reflect the greater severity of the pandemic and depth of the ensuing economic crisis in these countries as well as widespread underreporting in developing countries due to differences in testing availability and institutional capacity. While our analysis also shows that more stringent domestic containment measures help lower sovereign CDS spreads, the macro-fiscal cost of efforts aimed at curbing the spread of the disease could undermine credit worthiness and eventually push the cost of borrowing higher