I propose a new procedure for extracting probabilities of default from structural credit risk models based on model implied credit spreads (MICS) and implement this approach assuming a barrier option framework nesting the Merton (1974) model of capital structure. MICS are the increase in the...

I build a dynamic capital structure model that demonstrates how business-cycle variations in expected growth rates, economic uncertainty, and risk premia influence firms' financing and default policies. Countercyclical fluctuations in risk prices, default probabilities, and default losses arise...

This work documents the existence of a cointegration relationship between credit spreads, leverage and equity volatility for a large set of US companies. It is shown that accounting for the long-run equilibrium dynamic between these variables is essential to correctly explain credit spread...

The investment premium -- the finding that firms with low asset growth deliver high average returns -- is an integral part of recent factor models. I document empirically that the investment premium (1) reflects leverage, (2) does not exist among zero-leverage firms, and (3) increases with...

We generalize the asset dynamics assumptions of Leland (1994b) and Leland and Toft (1996) to a much richer class of models. By assuming a stationary corporate debt structure with constant principal, coupon payment and average maturity through continuous retirement and refinancing as long as the...

We present an integrated framework incorporating both exogenous liquidity risk in the secondary corporate bond market and volatility risk in the dynamics of asset value in debt rollover models. Using an innovative theoretical approach we derive general expressions for the debt and equity values...

The empirical tests of traditional structural models of credit risk tend to indicate that such models have been unsuccessful in the modeling of credit spreads. To address these negative findings some authors introduce single-factor stochastic volatility specifications and/or jumps.In the yield...

Following the method of Pesaran, Shin and Smith (1999), this study extends the results of Sun, Lin and Nieh (2007) to investigate the risk diversification issue of individual corporate bonds in portfolios. This is one of the few studies on the decomposition of individual corporate yield spreads....