Starting from the Merton framework for firm defaults, we provide theanalytics and robustness of the relationship between defaultprobabilities and default correlations. We show that loans with higherdefault probabilities will not only have higher variances but also highercorrelations with other...

We review the continuous-time literature on the so-called direct approach to bond option pricing. Going back to Ball and Torous (1983), this approach models bond price processes directly (i.e. without reference to interest rates or state variable processes) and applies methods that Black and...

This paper shows how financial contracts might be redesigned to allow for banks to manage the idiosyncratic component for their own accounts.

This paper develops a model and estimate simultaneously the joint dynamics of default-free and defaultable bond term structures.

The year 2002 was remarkably difficult on many fronts for most financial markets. For the high yield bond market, it was again a year of record amounts of defaults which contributed to low recovery rates and slightly negative absolute returns. (...)