This paper tests empirically the performance of three structural models of corporate bond pricing, namely Merton (1974), Leland (1994) and Fan and Sundaresan (2000). While the first two models overestimate bond prices, the Fan and Sundaresan model reveals an extremely good performance. When...

Credit risk models like Moody’s KMV are now well established in the market and give bond managers reliable estimates of default probabilities for individual firms. Until now it has been hard to relate those probabilities to the actual credit spreads observed on the market for corporate bonds....

In this paper, we assume that log returns can be modelled by a Levy process. We give explicit formulae for option prices by means of the Fourier transform. We explain how to infer the characteristics of the Levy process from option prices. This enables us to generate an implicit volatility...

Prices of currency options commonly differ from the Black-Scholes formula along two dimensions: implied volatilities vary by strike price (volatility smiles) and maturity (implied volatility of at­the­money options increases, on average, with maturity). We account for both using Gram­Charlier...

An extension of the idea of state tameness is presented in a dynamic framework. The proposed model for financial markets is rich enough to provide analytical tools that are mostly obtained in models that arise as the solution of SDEs with deterministic coefficients. In the presented model the...

Dynamic term structure models (DTSMs) price interest rate derivatives based on the model­ implied fair values of the yield curve, ignoring any pricing residuals on the yield curve that are either from model approximations or market imperfections. In contrast, option pricing in practice often...

We identify and characterize a class of term structure models where bond yields are quadratic functions of the state vector. We label this class the quadratic class and aim to lay a solid theoretical foundation for its future empirical application. We consider asset pricing in general and...