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...

Within bank activities, which is normally defined as the joint exercise of savings collection and credit supply, risk-taking is natural, as in many human activities. Among risks related to credit intermediation, credit risk assumes particular importance. It is most simply defined as the...

We study the leverage of U.S. firms over their life cycles and the connection between firm leverage, firm growth, and aggregate shocks. We construct a new dataset that combines private and public firms’ balance sheets with firm-level data from U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business...

The credit risk assessment process is necessary for maintaining financial stability, cost and time efficiency, model performance accuracy, comparability analysis and future business implications in the commercial banking sector. By accurately predicting credit risk, highly regulated banks can...

In this paper, we ask how firms’ optimal debt structure responds to a change in the bankruptcy regime. While existing work shows that this relationship is dependent on the ex-ante liquidation value of a firm, we demonstrate that the ownership of lenders they are connected to also matters. We...

In this paper, we revisit a frequently employed simplification within the WACC approach that company cost of capital kV is supposed to be invariant to the debt ratio and therefore equal to the unlevered cost kU . Even though we know from Miles and Ezzell (1980) that kV formally differs from kU ,...

An important research question examined in the credit risk literature focuses on the proportion of corporate yield spreads attributed to default risk. This topic is reexamined in the light of the different issues associated with the computation of transition and default probabilities obtained...

We estimate the costs of financial distress prior to default (pre-default costs) separately from the loss incurred at default (the loss given default) using a dynamic trade-off model of capital structure. We document that pre-default costs are on average equal to 6.5% of firm value per year. We...

Corporate leverage responds differently to employees' rights in bankruptcy depending on whether it is driven by strategic concerns in wage bargaining or by credit constraints. Using novel data on employees' rights in bankruptcy, we estimate their impact on leverage, exploiting time-series,...

We present novel empirical evidence on the use of off-balance sheet financing by publicly traded, U.S. non-financial firms. We find that about 5 percent of non-financial firms reported using a special purpose financing vehicle (SPV) to finance receivables in 2006. At the origination of the...