Despite intense criticism, agency credit ratings are still widely used in regulation and risk management. One possible alternative is to replace them with quantitative default risk measures. For US data, I find that systemically relevant losses from corporate defaults are mostly smaller if...

In both the theoretical and empirical literature of finance the relative riskiness of two debt instruments identical in all respects save the likelihood of default on payments of principal and/or interest has generally been measured by the difference between the yields to maturity of the two...

The tax codes in many countries allow for special tax advantages for investments in special retirement plans. Probably the most important advantage to these plans is that profits usually remain untaxed. This paper deals with the question, which assets are preferable in a taxdeferred account...