Most extant structural credit risk models underestimate credit spreads while matching default rates, recoveries, leverage, and equity risk premia - a shortcoming known as the credit spread puzzle. We calibrate and estimate a model able to explain medium to long-term credit spreads by...

We embed systematic default, pro-cyclical recovery rates and habit persistence into a model with a slight possibility of a macroeconomic disaster of reasonable magnitude. We derive analytical solutions for defaultable bond prices and show that a single set of structural parameters calibrated to...

This paper proposes a preference-based general equilibrium model that explains the pricing of the S&P 500 index options since the 1987 market crash. The central ingredients are a peso component in the consumption growth rate and the time-varying risk aversion induced by habit formation that...

This paper examines the joint time series of the S&P500 index and its options with a two-factor Hawkes jump-diffusion model that captures jump propagation (i.e., the phenomenon in which the strike of one jump substantially raises the probability for more to follow). The propagation effect...