We implement a structural bond pricing framework on a large panel of US industrial issues using an efficient maximum likelihood methodology. Although, like others before us, we underpredict yield spread levels when using only stock market data in the estimation, our errors are much less...

Using a new dataset of bid and offer quotes for credit default swaps, we investigate the relationship between theoretical determinants of default risk and actual market premia using linear regression. These theoretical determinants are firm leverage, volatility and the riskless interest rate. We...