In contrast to corporate defaults, regulators typically take a number of statutory actions to avoid the large fiscal costs associated with bank defaults. The distance-to-default, a widely used market-based measure of corporate default risk, ignores such regulatory actions. To overcome this...

We measure bank vulnerability in emerging markets using the distance-to-default, a risk-neutral indicator based on Merton's (1974) structural model of credit risk. The indicator is estimated using equity prices and balance-sheet data for 38 banks in 14 emerging market countries. Results show it...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted once more that interconnectedness in the financial system is a major source of systemic risk. I suggest a practical way to levy regulatory capital charges based on the degree of interconnectedness among financial institutions. Namely, the charges are...

This survey reviews a number of different fundamentals-based models for estimating default probabilities for firms and/or industries, and illustrates them with real applications by practitioners and policy making institutions. The models are especially useful when the firms analyzed do not have...