We show empirically that negative stock market returns are significantly more painful to investors when they occur in periods of low volatility, which is reflected in a steeper pricing kernel. In contrast, popular asset pricing theories imply that the pricing of stock market risk does not vary...

We investigate the informational content of credit default swap (CDS) spreads for future volatility of (firm) assets and equity. In the cross-section, CDS spreads are significantly more informative about future asset than equity volatility. The informational content of historical and option...

Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the watchlistʺ (rating review) Instrument has extended the agencies' role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and...

Within the structural approach for credit risk models we discuss the optimal exercise of the callable and convertible bonds. The Vasiĕk-model is applied to incorporate interest rate risk into the firm’s value process which follows a geometric Brownian motion. Finally, we derive pricing bounds...

In this study we investigate how bankruptcy affects the market behaviour of prices of stocks on Warsaw’s Stock Exchange. As the behaviour of prices can be seen in a myriad of ways, we investigate a particular aspect of this behaviour, namely the predictability of these price formation...

In this paper we study the impact of the degree of concentration of a financial system on the aggregate demand for housing as well as the feedback effect of the size of the mortgage loan market on lenders' profits, internal capital accumulation, loan losses and potential bailouts. In a general...

In this paper we study the impact of the degree of concentration of a financial system on the aggregate demand for housing as well as the feedback effect of the size of the mortgage loan market on lenders' profits, internal capital accumulation, loan losses and potential bailouts. In a general...

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...

A standard assumption of structural models of default is that firms' assets evolve exogenously. In this paper, we examine the importance of accounting for investment options in models of credit risk. In the presence of financing and investment frictions, fi rm-level variables that proxy for...

Fat tails of q-Gaussian distributions of daily log-leverage-returns of 520 North American industrial firms reported by Katz and Tian (2013) imply a significantly higher credit risk at short time-horizons and/or large initial distances to the default barrier than forecasted by traditional...