There is a close link between prices of equity options and the default probability of a firm. We show that in the presence of positive expected equity recovery, standard methods that assume zero equity recovery at default misestimate the option-implied default probability. We introduce a simple...

The standard measures of distress risk ignore the fact that firm defaults are correlated and that some defaults are more likely to occur in bad times. We use risk premium computed from corporate credit spreads to measure a firm’s exposure to systematic variation in default risk. Unlike...

We discuss a simple, exactly solvable model of stochastic stock dynamics that incorporates regime switching between healthy and distressed regimes. Using this model, which is analytically tractable, we discuss a way of extracting expected returns for stocks from realized CDS spreads,...

I use the 2007-2008 financial crisis to gauge how internal financial resources and external financial constraints mitigate or worsen the impact of the crisis on default risk of US industrial firms. I identify heterogeneity in short-term funding needs at the onset of the crisis by exploiting...

We propose an explanation for default contagion based on a Lucas model with two independent debt-financed trees. The transmission mechanism is that variations in the size of one tree impact the level of risk premium and the default decision for all borrowers. If a negative shock hits one tree,...

There have been 128 defaults among U.S. CDS reference entities between 2001 and 2020. Within this sample, the five-year CDS spread is a significant predictor of corporate default in models with equity market covariates and firm attributes. This finding holds for forecast horizons up to 12...

This paper provides an alternative approach to the structural credit risk models. The first-passage-time approach extends the original Merton (Journal of Finance 29, 449-470) model by accounting for the fact that the default may occur not only at the debt's maturity, but also prior to this date....

We construct a model of valuation to assess the financial fragility of a set of firms in a closed economy. A firm is identified with a possibly infinite random sequence of benefits. Firms with negative benefits in a given period are said to be in distress and need liquidity to refinance their...

We construct a model of valuation to assess the financial fragility of a set of firms in a closed economy. A firm is identified with a possibly infinite random sequence of benefits. Firms with negative benefits in a given period are said to be in distress and need liquidity to refinance their...