We study how changes in the economic and regulatory conditions alter the informativeness of credit ratings, accounting for securities' information acquisition costs. Using the financial crisis and the Dodd-Frank Act as shocks in the US corporate bond market, we find that the informativeness of...

Concerns have been raised, especially since the global financial crisis, about whether trading in credit default swaps (CDS) increases the credit risk of the reference entities. We use a unique, comprehensive sample covering 901 CDS introductions on North American corporate issuers between June...

We address three questions relating to the interest rate options market: What is the shape of the smile? What are the economic determinants of the shape of the smile? Do these determinants have predictive power for the future shape of the smile and vice versa? We investigate these issues using...

In this paper we investigate models of the term structure where the factors are interest rates. As an example, we derive a no-arbitrage model of the term structure in which any two futures (as opposed to forward) rates act as factors. The term structure shifts and tilts as the factor rates vary....

We build a no-arbitrage model of the term structure, using two stochastic factors on each date, the short-term interest rate and the premium of the forward rate over the short-term interest rate. The model can be regarded as an extension to two factors of the lognormal interest rate model of...

Can the liquidity premium in asset prices, as documented in the exchange-traded equity and bond markets, be generalized to the over-the-counter (OTC) derivative markets? Using OTC euro (euro;) interest rate cap and floor data, we find that illiquid options trade at higher prices relative to...

This paper investigates the liquidity effect in asset pricing by studying the liquidity-premium relationship of an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) and its underlying share. Using the Amihud (2002) measure, the turnover ratio and trading infrequency as proxies for liquidity, we show that a...

This paper investigates how individual attention triggers influence financial risk-taking based on a large sample of trading records from a brokerage service that sends standardized push messages on stocks to retail investors. By exploiting the data in a difference-in-differences (DID) setting,...

This paper provides a status-based explanation for convertible securities. An entrepreneur with status concerns inducing risk-taking decides how to finance the firm and how to dynamically manage it. Solving analytically for the optimal security, we find that it is substantially similar to a...

This paper examines the convexity bias introduced by pricing interest rate swaps off the Eurocurrency futures curve and the market's adjustment of this bias in prices over time. Theconvexity bias arises because of the difference between a futures versus a forward contract on interest rates,...