Changes in collateralization have been implicated in significant default (or near-default) events during the financial crisis, most notably with AIG. We have developed a framework for quantifying this effect based on moving between Merton-type and Black-Cox-type structural default models. Our...

The incremental risk charge (IRC) is a new regulatory requirement from the Basel Committee in response to the recent financial crisis. Notably few models for IRC have been developed in the literature. This paper proposes a methodology consisting of two Monte Carlo simulations. The first Monte...

Using a novel data set and new proxies for rollover losses and market illiquidity, this paper finds that market illiquidity affects corporate bond spreads beyond a liquidity premium through a “rollover risk channel”. This effect is economically significant during episodes of market...

The distress puzzle refers to the empirical regularity that firms with high measures of default likelihood earn anomalously low returns, despite having relatively high CAPM betas. This paper shows it is possible to qualitatively explain this anomaly using a consumption-based asset pricing model...

This paper examines whether rollover risk is priced on corporate bond spreads. Using a novel data set and new proxies for rollover risk and market illiquidity, the empirical analysis developed reveals that market illiquidity affects corporate bond spreads beyond a liquidity premium through a...

Inspired by Aumann and Serrano (2008) and Foster and Hart (2009), we propose risk-neutral options' implied measures of riskiness and investigate their significance in predicting the cross section of expected returns per unit of risk. The empirical analyses indicate a negative and significant...

We introduce a new approach to measuring riskiness in the equity market. We propose option implied and physical measures of riskiness and investigate their performance in predicting future market returns. The predictive regressions indicate a positive and significant relation between...

We propose options' implied and physical measures of riskiness and investigate their performance in predicting future returns on the U.S. equity market. The predictive regressions indicate a positive and significant relation between time-varying riskiness and expected market returns. The...

This paper shows that exposure to aggregate distress risk is the underlying source of the premiums for the Fama-French size (SMB) and value (HML) factors. Using a unique dataset of aggregate business failures of both private and public firms from 1926 to 1997, I build portfolios that track news...

We develop an asset-pricing model with endogenous corporate policies that explains how inflation jointly impacts real asset prices and corporate default risk. Our model includes two empirically grounded nominal frictions: fixed nominal coupons and sticky profitability. Taken together, these...