An investigation of oil prices impact on sovereign credit default swaps in Russia and Venezuela

Thomas Chuffart (1, 2) , Emma Hooper (3, 4)

1 CRESE - Centre de REcherches sur les Stratégies Economiques (UR 3190)
2 CeReFiM - Center for Research in Finance and Management [UNamur]
3 LabEx ReFi
4 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques

In this paper, we study the impact of oil price returns on sovereign Credit Default Swaps (CDS) spreads for two major oil producers, Russia and Venezuela. Using daily spreads from 2008 to 2015 through a Time Varying Transition Probabilities Markov Switching model, our results show that crude oil price and its volatility are critical determinants of their sovereign debt. We highlight some differences between the two countries, depending on the state of the economy. Moreover, global and local factors play a major role in the determination of sovereign CDS spreads.

Mots clés: Oil prices; Sovereign Credit Default Swaps; Markov-switching; Time series modeling; Venezuela; Russia

Domaines: Economies et finances

Thomas Chuffart, Emma Hooper. An investigation of oil prices impact on sovereign credit default swaps in Russia and Venezuela. Energy Economics, 2019, 80, pp.904-916. ⟨10.1016/j.eneco.2019.02.003⟩. ⟨hal-02194152⟩