Default probability is a fundamental variable determining the credit worthiness of a firm and equity volatility estimation plays a key role in its evaluation. Assuming a structural credit risk modeling approach, we study the impact of choosing different non parametric equity volatility...

Equity returns and fi rm's default probability are strictly interrelated financial measures capturing the credit risk profi le of a fi rm. Following the idea proposed in [20] we use high-frequency equity prices in order to estimate the volatility risk component of a fi rm within Merton [17]...

We analyze the properties of different estimators of multivariate volatilities in the presence of microstructure noise, with particular focus on the Fourier estimator. This estimator is consistent in the case of asynchronous data and robust to microstructure effects; further we prove the...

The finite sample properties of the Fourier estimator of integrated volatility under market microstructure noise are studied. Analytic expressions for the bias and the mean squared error (MSE) of the contaminated estimator are derived. These formulae can be practically used to design optimal...