Many empirical studies on credit spread determinants consider a single-regime model over the entire sample period and find limited explanatory power. We model the credit cycle independently from macroeconomic fundamentals using a Markov regime switching model. We show that accounting for...

An important research area of the corporate yield spread literature seeks to measure the proportion of the spread explained by factors such as the possibility of default, liquidity or tax differentials. We contribute to this literature by assessing the ability of observed macroeconomic factors...

An important research area of the corporate yield spread literature seeks to measure the proportion of the spread that can be explained by factors such as the possibility of default, liquidity, tax differentials and market risk. We contribute to this literature by assessing the ability of...

We construct a model of valuation to assess the financial fragility of a set of firms in a closed economy. A firm is identified with a possibly infinite random sequence of benefits. Firms with negative benefits in a given period are said to be in distress and need liquidity to refinance their...

An important research question examined in the recent credit risk literature focuses on the proportion of corporate yield spreads which can be attributed to default risk. Past studies have verified that only a small fraction of the spreads can be explained by default risk. In this paper, we...

We construct a model of valuation to assess the financial fragility of a set of firms in a closed economy. A firm is identified with a possibly infinite random sequence of benefits. Firms with negative benefits in a given period are said to be in distress and need liquidity to refinance their...

Using a real-time random regime shift technique, we identify and discuss two different regimes in the dynamics of credit spreads during 2002-2012: a liquidity regime and a default regime. Both regimes contribute to the patterns observed in credit spreads. The liquidity regime seems to explain...

In this paper, we provided a unifying analysis of latent variable models in finance through the concept of stochastic discount factor (SDF).