Default risk permeates the behavior of corporate bond returns and spreads, credit default swap spreads, estimation of default probabilities, and loss in default. Pertinent to this review are salient empirical findings and implications of default process estimation over 1974 to 2021. Both...

The structural uncertainty model with Bayesian learning, advanced by Weitzman (AER 2007), provides a framework for gauging the effect of structural uncertainty on asset prices and risk premiums. This paper provides an operational version of this approach that incorporates realistic priors about...

The goal of Section I is to show the economic foundations for the form of the distortion function A[dt; κ] in equation (2). This is formalized through Proposition IA3 and Corollary IA4.Section II contains the proof of axiomatic consistency properties of the MAP performance measure (Section...

This article develops a family of stock valuation models that are based on book values and earnings. The modeling approach can be consistent with a large class of allowable dividend policies and does not require an explicit forecast of future book values. Reconciling empirical evidence, the...

This article provides several new insights into the economic sources of skewness. First, we document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in return skewness. Second, we show how risk aversion introduces skewness in the...

This article studies the valuation of options written on the average level of a Markov process. The general properties of such options are examined. We propose a closed-form characterization in which the option payoff is contingent on cumulative catastrophe losses. In our framework, the loss...

We investigate whether the volatility risk premium is negative by examining the statistical properties of delta-hedged option portfolios (buy the option and hedge with stock). Within a stochastic volatility framework, we demonstrate a correspondence between the sign and magnitude of the...

From a credit risk perspective, little is known about the distress factors - economy-wide or firm-specific - that are important in explaining variations in defaultable coupon yields. This paper proposes and empirically tests a family of credit risk models. Empirically, we find that firm-specific...

How do risk-neutral return skews evolve over time and in the cross-section of individual stocks? We document the differential pricing of individual equity options versus the market index, and relate it to variations in the skew. The change-of-measure induced by marginal-utility tilting of the...

This article studies the valuation of average-rate contingent claims (both arithmetic and geometric), whose importance in corporate risk management is increasing rapidly. Arbitrage--free characterizations are provided for such option--like Asian claims. When the spot price is governed by a...