Predictions of firm-level credit spreads based on the current spot and forward credit spreads can be significantly improved upon by using the information contained in the shape of the creditspread curve. However, the current credit-spread curve is not a sufficient statistic for predicting future...

Recent advances in asset pricing - the reduced form approach to pricing risk debt and derivatives - are used to quantitatively evaluate several proposals for mandatory bank issue of subordinated debt. We find that credit spreads on both fixed and floating rate subordinated debt provide...

We examine whether mandating banks to issue subordinated debt would enhance market monitoring and control risk taking. To evaluate whether subordinated debt enhances risk monitoring, we extract the credit-spread curve for each banking firm in our sample and examine whether changes in credit...

Optimal equityholder decisions involve trade-offs between risk-minimizing strategies, which reduce the likelihood of losing the charter, and risk-maximizing strategies, which exploit the insured-deposit base. When banks cannot respond dynamically to market information, we have seen that the bank...