Using the industry benchmark CreditGrades model to analyze credit default swap (CDS) spreads across a large number of companies during the 2007-09 credit crisis, the authors demonstrate that the performance of the model can be significantly improved by calibrating it with option-implied...

We show that the call-put implied volatility spread (IVS) outperforms many well-known predictors of the U.S. equity premium at return horizons up to six months over the period from 1996:1 to 2017:12. The predictive ability of the IVS is unrelated to the dividend yield and is useful in explaining...