Recent work has suggested that strategic underperformance of debt-service obligations by equity holders can resolve the gap between observed yield spreads and those generated by Merton (1974)-style models.(...)

Since the equity premium as well as the risk-free rate puzzle question the concepts centralto financial and economic modeling, we apply behavioral decision theory to asset pricing in view ofsolving these puzzles. U.S. stock market data for the period 1960-2003 and German stock marketdata for the...

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernelsderived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. Aconsistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empiricalmarket utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is...

Modeling the portfolio credit risk is one of the crucial issues of the last yearsin the financial problems. We propose the valuation model of Collateralized DebtObligations based on a one- and two-parameter copula and default intensities estimatedfrom market data. The presented method is used to...

We investigate the problem of modeling defaults of dependent credits.In the framework of the class of structural default models we studythreshold models where for each credit the underling ability-to-payprocess is a transformation of a Wiener processes. We propose a modelfor dependent defaults...

We study the risk of holding credit default swaps (CDS) in the trading book. In particular, wecompare the Value at Risk (VaR) of a CDS position to the VaR for investing in the respectivefirm’s equity. Our sample consists of CDS – stock price pairs for 86 actively traded firms overthe period...

In order to analyze the pricing of portfolio credit risk – as revealed by tranche spreadsof a popular credit default swap (CDS) index – we extract risk-neutral probabilities ofdefault (PDs) and physical asset return correlations from single-name CDS spreads. Thetime profile and overall level...

This is study empirically examine the impact of market conditions on credit spreads asmotivated by recently developed structural credit risk models. Using credit default swap(CDS) spreads, we find that, in the time series, average credit spreads are decreasing inGDP growth rate, but increasing...

This paper investigates the market pricing of subprime mortgage risk on the basis of data forthe ABX.HE family of indices, which have become a key barometer of mortgage marketconditions during the recent financial crisis. After an introduction into ABX index mechanicsand a discussion of...

We examine whether consumer confidence – as a proxy for individual investor sentiment –affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recentevidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock marketreturns on average...