Credit risk measurement and management become more important in all financial institutions in the light of the current financial crisis and the global recession. This particularly applies to most of the complex structured financing forms whose risk cannot be quantified with com-mon rating...

This paper examines why unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ratings. Bothself-selection among issuers and strategic conservatism of rating agencies may be reasonableexplanations. Analyses of default incidences of non-U.S. borrowers between January 1996and December 2006 show that...

Loss Given Default (LGD) is a major element for pricing credits and bonds. As there has beena substantial amount of research during the last years, this paper aims to give an overview.Initially, defaults and recovery definitions for credits and the differences to bonds are discussed.A survey of...