The Gaussian Affine Term Structure Model (ATSM) introduced by Duffie and Kan is often used in finance to price derivatives written on interest rates or to compute the reserve to hedge a portfolio of credits (CreditVaR), and in macroeconomic applications to study the links between real activity...

This paper examines how credit derivatives have changed the construction of an efficient portfolio. Credit derivatives provide a way of gaining exposure to credit risk alone, to the exclusion of interest rate risk. They also permit a relatively easy use of leverage. We examine two types of...

Dependence is an important issue in credit risk portfolio modeling and pricing. We discuss a straightforward common factor model of credit risk dependence, which is motivated by intensity models such as Duffie and Singleton (1998), among others. In the empirical analysis, we study dependence...