This paper studies the discriminatory power and calibration quality of the structural credit risk models under the 'exogenous default boundary' approach including those proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (1995) and Collin-Dufresne and Goldstein (2001), and 'endogenous default boundary' approach...

We estimate probabilities of bankruptcy for 5,784 industrial firms in the period 1988-2002 in a model where common equity is viewed as a down-and-out barrier option on the firm's assets. Asset values and volatilities as well as firm-specific bankruptcy barriers are simultaneously backed out from...

Financial institutions and academic researchers utilize bankruptcy prediction models to assess distress risk. However, predicting default can be problematic since (i) few firms actually experience default in any one year, (ii) the lag between practical and actual default can vary significantly,...

This paper proposes a variant application of the Merton distance-to-default model by employing implied volatility and implied cost of capital to predict defaults. The proposed model's results are compared with predictions obtained from three popular models in different setups. We find that our...

Merton's structural model for sovereigns is proven to be useful to analyze the default risk of a country. We are the first to investigate how fast CDS spreads react to changes in model inputs and outputs. CDS spread changes strongly correlate with exchange rate returns, which are an input to the...

In this paper, we evaluate an alternative approach for bankruptcy prediction that measures the financial healthiness of firms that have coupon-paying debts. The approach is based on the framework of Leland and Toft (1996), which is an extension of a widely-used model; the Black-Scholes-Merton...

This paper proposes a variant application of the Merton distance-to-default model by employing implied volatility and implied a cost of capital to forecast defaults. The proposed model's results are compared with predictions obtained from three popular models in different setups. We find that...

Using a structural model of default, we construct a measure of systemic default defined as the probability that many firms default at the same time. We account for correlations in defaults between firms through exposures to common shocks. The systemic default measure spikes during recession...