We develop a mathematical proof demonstrating that only financially-strong firms will sell put options on their own stock, but financially-weak firms will not. The sale of options on a company's own stock exposes the buyer to default risk of the issuer, which additionally complicates the payoff...

There is a link between barrier options and tax shields of interest expense. We combine this link with a traditional valuation approach, to present practical valuation formulas for interest tax shields in three debt scenarios with risk of default: (1) constant debt, (2) delayed debt, and (3)...

Based on the works of Brockman and Turtle (2003) and Giesecke (2004), we propose in this study a hybrid barrier option model to explain observed credit spreads. It is free of problems with the structural model which underprescribed credit spreads for investment grade corporate bonds and...

Upstream producers that possess market power, sell forwards with a lengthy duration to regional electricity companies (REC). As part of the liberalization of the electricity market, RECs have been privatized and exposed to a possible bankruptcy threat if spot prices have fallen below their...

Upstream producers that possess market power, sell forwards with a lengthy duration to regional electricity companies (REC). As part of the liberalization of the electricity market, RECs have been privatized and exposed to a possible bankruptcy threat if spot prices have fallen below their...

Prior evidence on pre-bankruptcy filing informed trading is mixed. The inconclusive findings might result from the sole focus on stock trading. We reassess the presence of pre-filing informed and insider trades by examining the information content of options trading before bankruptcy...

Existing dynamic capital structure models are based on single triggers determining bankruptcy, mainly over-indebtedness or illiquidity. The latter one tends to underestimate optimal capital structures by ignoring capital providers' flexibility to inject fresh money. The former one leans towards...

The value premium is the empirical observation that low market/book “value” stocks have higher returns than high market/book “growth” stocks. In this paper, we investigate and present evidence for an “equity as a call option hypothesis” for the value premium. Volatility decreases the...

Scholars and policymakers now debate reforms that would prevent a bankruptcy filing from being a moment that forces valuation of the firm, crystallization of claims against it, and elimination of junior stakeholders' interest in future appreciation in firm value. These reforms have many names,...

This paper applies to the static hedge of barrier options a technique, mean-square hedging, designed to minimize the size of the hedging error when perfect replication is not possible. It introduces an extension of this technique which preserves the computational efficiency of mean-square...