We study the relation between the credit cycle and macro-economic fundamentals in an intensity-based framework. Using rating transition and default data of U.S. corporates from Standard and Poor’s over the period 1980-2005 we directly estimate the credit cycle from the micro rating data. We...

State space models play a key role in the estimation of time-varying sensitivities in financial markets. The objective of this book is to analyze the relative merits of modern time series techniques, such as Markov regime switching and the Kalman filter, to model structural changes in the...