This paper finds that systematic default risk, or the event of widespread defaults in the corporate sector, is an important determinant of equity returns. Moreover, the market price of systematic default risk is one order of magnitude higher than the market price of other risk factors. In...

Limited access to finance and its high cost have contributed to relatively low levels of private investment and subpar growth in the Kyrgyz Republic. Interest rate spreads have moderated in recent years, but remain high from both a regional and global perspective. At the same time, collateral...

Interest rate derivatives on major currencies, with notional outstanding amounts adding up to hundreds of trillions, are mostly indexed on Libor and Euribor benchmarks, as are hundreds of billions in loans to enterprises, mortgages and other retail loans to the real economy. Yet, the prevailing...

Option prices provide valuable information on market expectations. This paper attempts to extract market expectations, as conveyed by an implied risk-neutral probability distribution, from option prices for the dollar-euro exchange rate. Returns'' volatilities are inferred from observed and...

In this paper, we examine the ability of the contingent claims approach (CCA) to identify corporate sector and economy-wide vulnerabilities. We apply the Moody''s MfRisk model, which uses aggregated CCA principles, to assess vulnerabilities retroactively in two historical country cases. The...