Credit risk is an important issue in many finance areas, such as the determination of cost of capital, the valuation of corporate bonds and pricing of credit derivatives. Credit risk has also been a cause and consequence of the current financial crisis. Thus, methods for measuring credit risk,...

Default probabilities (PDs) and correlations play a crucial role in the New Basel Capital Accord. In commercial credit risk models they are an important constituent. Yet, modeling and estimation of PDs and correlations is still under active discussion. We show how the Basel II one factor model...

The majority of industry credit portfolio risk models, as well as recent scientific results, are based on isolated modules for default probabilities and recoveries in the event of default. This paper shows that these common methods lead to various econometric drawbacks when the parameters are...

A major topic in empirical finance is correlation of default risk. Correlations are the main drivers for credit risk on a portfolio basis and for banks' capital requirements under the New Basel Accord. However, empirical evidence on the magnitude of correlations is rather scarce, mainly due to...