Data on the credit rating of bonds issued in the first half of the 1990s suggest that investors in emerging market securities paid little attention to credit risk, or that they were comfortable with the high level of credit risk that they were incurring. The literature in international finance...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...