We analyze trading opportunities that arise from differences between the bond and the CDS market. By simultaneously entering a position in a CDS contract and the underlying bond, traders can build a default-risk free position that allows them to repeatedly earn the difference between the bond...

I use the 2007-2008 financial crisis to gauge how internal financial resources and external financial constraints mitigate or worsen the impact of the crisis on default risk of US industrial firms. I identify heterogeneity in short-term funding needs at the onset of the crisis by exploiting...

Using a unique cross-sectional dataset of 381 cash and synthetic securitizations issued by 53 banks from the EU-15 plus Switzerland between 1997 and 2007, this paper provides empirical evidence for time-dependent negative wealth effects of credit risk securitization announcements in European...

Prior research has addressed the question of whether certain events cause a transfer of wealth between stockholders and bondholders but does not control for the events' impacts on firms' credit risk. This may explain why many studies fail to identify wealth transfers. By employing announcements...

We compare the stability and timeliness of credit ratings produced by a traditional issuer-paid rating agency (Moody's Investors Service) and a subscriber-paid rater (Rapid Ratings). Moody's ratings exhibit less volatility but are slower to identify default risk. We control for Moody's aversion...

This paper investigates information transfer effects of bond rating downgrades measured by equity abnormal returns for industry portfolios. Industry rivals can be subject to two opposing effects, the contagion effect and the competition effect. We find that the net effect is strongly dependent...

We find that Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) see through transitory shocks to credit risk that stem from transitory shocks to equity prices, while market-based measures of credit risk do not. For a given stock return, CRAs are significantly less likely to downgrade firms with transitory shocks...

We provide evidence that credit investors do not fully impound the implications of firms' cost structure when pricing credit default swaps. Information about firms' cost structure is not disclosed and needs to be estimated. Furthermore, the performance implications of firms' cost structure...

How do different types of debt influence firm credit risk? This paper sheds new light on this issue by decomposing the leverage ratio into market debt, bank debt, and trade credit leverage ratios by balance sheet account type classification; and short-term debt and long-term debt leverage ratios...