We investigate the informational content of credit default swap (CDS) spreads for future volatility of (firm) assets and equity. In the cross-section, CDS spreads are significantly more informative about future asset than equity volatility. The informational content of historical and option...

This paper studies a firmś optimal capital structure in an environment, where the firmś stock price serves as a public signal for its credit worthiness. In equilibrium, equity investors choose how much information to acquire privately, which induces a positive relation between the amount of...

We investigate the risk of holding credit default swaps (CDS) in the trading book and compare the Value at Risk (VaR) of a CDS position to the VaR for investing in the respective firm's equity using a sample of CDS stock price pairs for 86 actively traded firms over the period from March 2003 to...

This study provides a rigorous empirical comparison of structural and reduced-form credit risk frameworks. As major difference we focus on the discriminative modeling of default time. In contrast to previous literature, we calibrate both approaches to bond and equity prices. By using same input...

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

We find that equity mispricing impacts the speed at which firms adjust to their target leverage and does so in predictable ways depending on whether the firm is over- or underlevered. For example, firms that are above their target leverage and should therefore issue equity (or retire debt),...

Hypotheses concerning capital structures are some of the most frequently tested in the financial literature. Authors usually discuss different incentives for the use of leverage. Their views can be broadly classified in two main groups. The proponents of the first argue that leverage increases...

The October 14, 2008 TARP program mandated a forced issuance of TARP preferred stock by the largest U.S. banks. Soon after, many smaller banks were not forced but chose to issue TARP preferred stock after being approved for issuance. We investigate the impact of TARP preferred issuance upon...

This paper shows that during industry downturns, firms experience significantly greater valuation losses when their industry peers' long-term debt is maturing at the time of the shocks. Across a range of tests, the analysis addresses the endogenous determination of peer debt maturity structure....

This paper analyzes the effect of corporate debt offerings on stock prices. Straight debt offerings have non-positive price effects, while convertible debt offerings have significantly negative effects. Public utility mortgage (non-convertible) bond offerings have marginally negative effects,...