This paper analyzes price discovery among residential mortgage-backed securities (MBS), their credit default swaps (ABCDS), and the associated ABX contracts. VECM regressions show that the MBS and ABX markets lead price discovery over the ABCDS market. Neither the MBS nor the ABX market...

We examine the role of asset-backed security collateralized debt obligations (ABS CDOs) as a primary catalyst for the financial crisis. We show how ABS CDOs became the main investment vehicle for the riskiest investment-grade securities in the private-label mortgage market. We estimate a final...