This study investigates the dynamic behavior of the sovereign CDS term premium for a group of European countries. The CDS term premium can be regarded as a forward-looking measure of idiosyncratic sovereign default risk as perceived by financial markets in real time. Using a Markov-switching...

At the end of 2009, countries in the Eurozone (euro area) began to experience a sudden divergence of bond yields as the market perception of sovereign default risk increased. The theory of complete markets suggests that sovereign debt and credit default swap (CDS) credit spreads should track...