Turbo-Certificates are one of the most popular structured equity products for private investors in Germany. They can be regarded as special forms of barrier options. The relation between the barrier level and the strike price is especially important for the design of these products. By using a...

This paper considers a simple model of credit risk and derives the limit distribution of losses under different assumptions regarding the structure of systematic and idiosyncratic risks and the nature of firm heterogeneity. The theoretical results obtained indicate that if firm-specific risk...

We consider a stochastic volatility model of the mean-reverting type to describe the evolution of a firm’s values instead of the classical approach by Merton with geometric Brownian motions. We develop an analytical expression for the default probability. Our simulation results indicate that...

The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market - rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities - led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is benign, but when they occur...

The Capital Assistance Program (CAP) was created by the U.S. government in February 2009 to provide backup capital to large financial institutions unable to raise sufficient capital from private investors. Under the terms of the CAP, a participating bank receives contingent capital by issuing...

We consider a stochastic volatility model of the mean-reverting type to describe the evolution of a firm’s values instead of the classical approach by Merton with geometric Brownian motions. We develop an analytical expression for the default probability. Our simulation results indicate that...

This paper addresses the financial risks faced by New York dairy farmers by discussing and developing prescriptive risk-contingent operating and mortgage loan contracts. It is argued that structured credit products with an imbedded contingent claim or price put option can effectively reduce or...

(Zheng, 2009) does not realize that the government provides nonrecourse loans to investors to buy toxic assets. Nonrecourse loans allow the borrower to walk away from the loan with no penalties besides ceding the asset that the loan purchased. Thus (Zheng, 2009)'s conclusions that less well...

On April 26, 2010, the U.S. Treasury had 163 trading days to sell a $37 billion dollar stake of 7.7 billion shares in Citigroup. Citigroup's stock price on April 23, 2010, was well above the U.S. Treasury's “break even” price of $3.25. The U.S. Treasury announced that it planned an...

On December 10, 2009, the auction of JP Morgan Chase's warrants raised gross proceeds of $950 million, topping the previous warrant auction record of the 1983 Chrysler warrants in real and nominal terms. This paper analyzed the results from the secondary market trading on December 9, 2009, of...