Foster and Hart proposed an operational measure of riskiness for discrete random variables. We show that their defining equation has no solution for many common continuous distributions. We show how to extend consistently the definition of riskiness to continuous random variables. For many...

We show that binomial economies with financial assets are an informative and tractable model to study endogenous leverage and collateral equilibrium: endogenous leverage can be highly volatile, but it is always easy to compute. The possibility of default can have a dramatic effect on...

We show that binomial economies with financial assets are an informative and tractable model to study endogenous leverage and collateral equilibrium: endogenous leverage can be highly volatile, but it is always easy to compute. The possibility of default can have a dramatic effect on...

Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi (2008) show that firms with a high probability of default have significantly low average future returns. We show that there is a large overlap between stocks classified as high default risk, and those that are likely to produce extremely high returns over the...

This paper shows that exposure to aggregate distress risk is the underlying source of the premiums for the Fama-French size (SMB) and value (HML) factors. Using a unique dataset of aggregate business failures of both private and public firms from 1926 to 1997, I build portfolios that track news...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. Our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral. First, our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no...

Foster and Hart propose a measure of riskiness for discrete random variables. Their defining equation has no solution for many common continuous distributions. We show how to extend consistently the definition of riskiness to continuous random variables. For many continuous random variables, the...