The main goal of this paper is to better understand the behavior of credit spreads in the past and the potential risk of unexpected future credit spread changes. One important consideration to note regarding credit spreads is the fact that bond spreads contain a liquidity premium, which...

We review heterogeneous agent-based models of financial stability and their application in stress tests. In contrast to the mainstream approach, which relies heavily on the rational expectations assumption and focuses on situations where it is possible to compute an equilibrium, this approach...

The purpose of this article is to value some life insurance contracts in a stochastic interest rate environment taking into account the default risk of the underlying insurance company. The participating life insurance contracts considered here can be expressed as portfolios of barrier options...

The paper analyzes the design of participating life insurance contracts with minimum return rate guarantees. Without default risk, the insured receives the maximum of a guaranteed rate and a participation in the investment returns. With default risk, the payoff is modified by a default put...

We explore the implications of ambiguity for the pricing of credit default swaps (CDSs). A model of heterogeneous investors with independent preferences for ambiguity and risk shows that, since CDS contracts are assets in zero net supply, the net credit risk exposure of the marginal investor...

The topic of insolvency risk in connection with life insurance companies has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, the question is investigated of how the values of the equity and of the liability of a life insurance company are affected by the default risk and the choice...

Reduced-form models of default calibrated to expected default losses and comovements between default losses and an equity-based pricing kernel generate CDS spreads that tend to fall below historical values. In frictionless markets, resolving this credit spread puzzle requires credit-market...

We measure credit risk premia---prices for bearing corporate default risk in excess of expected default losses---using Markit CDS and Moody's Analytics EDF data. We find dramatic variation over time in credit risk premia, with peaks in 2002, during the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and in...

In an attempt to transfer the loss rate risks in motor insurance to the capital market, we use the tranche technique to hedge the motor insurance risks. This paper illustrates AXA and their securitization of French motor insurance in 2005 as an example. Though this application is new, this...

The credit valuation adjustment (CVA) of OTC derivatives is an important part of the Basel III credit risk capital requirements and current accounting rules. Its calculation is not an easy task - not only it is necessary to model the future value of the derivative, but also the probability of...