This article surveys available research on the contingent‐claims approach to risky debt valuation. The author describes both the structural and reduced form versions of contingent claims models and summarizes both the theoretical and empirical research in this area. Relative to the progress...

In this second installment, the author addresses some of the problems associated with empirically validating contingent‐claim models for valuing risky debt. The article uses a simple contingent claims risky debt valuation model to fit term structures of credit spreads derived from data for...