This paper constructs a dynamic model of the equilibrium determination of relative prices when arbitragers face holding costs. The major findings are that 1) models based on riskless arbitrage arguments alone may not provide usefully tight bounds on observed prices, 2) arbitragers are often most...

This paper compares the terms of 63 privately-placed debt agreements with those found in public bond indentures. The main results of the analysis are as follows: 1) Private agreements more aggressively control the actions of equity holders by setting various covenants more tightly, by...

This paper documents that firms can and do change the convenants of their public debt indentures through consent solicitations. A game theoretic model of these solicitations shows that they can coercive, i.e. bondholders who cannot coordinate their actions may consent to convenant changes even...

We use the information in credit-default swaps to obtain direct measures of the size of the default and nondefault components in corporate spreads. We find that the majority of the corporate spread is due to default risk. This result holds for all rating categories and is robust to the...

We examine whether there is a flight-to-liquidity premium in Treasury bond prices by comparing them with prices of bonds issued by Refcorp, a U.S. Government agency. Since Refcorp bonds are, in effect, guaranteed by the Treasury, they have the same credit as Treasury bonds. We find a large...

We conduct an analysis of the risk and return characteristics of a number of widely used fixed income arbitrage strategies. We find that the strategies requiring more “intellectual capital†to implement tend to produce significant alphas after controlling for bond and equity market...

We develop a simple closed 0form valuation model for options when the volatility of the underlying asset is stochastic. Out approach differs from previous research in that we model the pricing density directly. We show that implied volatility estimates from the Black-Scholes model can be very...

This paper studies the market price of credit risk incorporated into one of the most important credit spreads in the financial markets: interestrate swap spreads. Our approach consists of jointly modeling the swap and Treasury term structures using a four-factor affine credit framework and...

We study how the market prices the default and liquidity risks incorporated into one of the most important credit spreads in the financial markets–interest rate swap spreads. Our approach consists of jointly modeling the Treasury, repo, and swap term structures using a general five-factor...

We study the optimal recursive refinancing problem where a borrower minimizes his lifetime mortgage costs by repeatedly refinancing when rates drop sufficiently. Key factors affecting the optimal decision are the cost of refinancing and the possibility that the mortgagor may have to...