The early work of Black and Scholes, and Merton, made the connection between conventional options and corporate liabilities. The standard textbooks now employ option-pricing arguments in discussing the valuation of stocks, bonds, convertible bonds and warrants; this discussion extends to the...

We develop contingent claims valuation models for corporate bonds that are capable of generating yield spreads consistent with the levels observed in practice. We incorporate important features in the valuation related to the occurrence of and payoff upon bankruptcy and focus on the default risk...