Understanding the nature of credit risk has important implications for financial stability. Since authorities notably, central banks focus on risks that have systemic implications, it is crucial to develop ways to measure these risks. The difficulty lies in finding reliable measures of aggregate...

The rapid growth of the credit default swap (CDS) market and the increased number of defaults in recent years have led to major changes in the way CDS contracts are settled when default occurs. Auctions are increasingly the mechanism used to settle these contracts, replacing physical transfers...

Understanding the nature of credit risk has important implications for financial stability. Since authorities notably, central banks focus on risks that have systemic implications, it is crucial to develop ways to measure these risks. The difficulty lies in finding reliable measures of aggregate...

Spreads of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) vary significantly in the cross section and over time, but the sources of this variation are not well understood. We document that, in the cross section, MBS spreads adjusted for the prepayment option show a pronounced smile with respect to the...

The Sato process model for option prices is expanded to accomodate credit considerations by incorporating a single jump to default occuring at an independent random time with a Weibull distribution. Explicit formulas for bid and ask prices are derived. Liquidity considerations are captured by...

The importance of collateralization through the change of funding cost is now well recognized among practitioners. In this article, we have extended the previous studies of collateralized derivative pricing to more generic situation, that is asymmetric and imperfect collateralization with the...

We investigate whether the spread of corporate debt contacts can be explained by their ultimate recovery rates. Using the actual realized recovery rates of defaulted debt instruments issued in the U.S. from 1962 to 2007, we find that recovery rate is reflected in the spread at issuance, and that...

This paper examines the effects of liquidity during the 2007-09 crisis, focussing on the senior tranche of the CDX.NA.IG Index and on Moody's AAA Corporate Bond Index. The aim is to understand whether these senior credit indices were discounted below fair value and to what extent this discount...

This paper explains the risk and returns of US corporate bond indices using a set of economically-motivated factors. In particular, I find that options markets explain a great deal of credit returns. Two particular features of corporate bonds generate option exposure. The first is that, in...

Most mortgages in the U.S. are securitized in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Yield spreads on these securities are thus a key determinant of homeowners' funding costs. We study variation in MBS spreads over time and across securities, and document a cross-sectional smile pattern in MBS...