We consider the optimal portfolio problem of a power investor who wishes to allocate her wealth between several credit default swaps (CDSs) and a money market account. We model contagion risk among the reference entities in the portfolio using a reduced form Markovian model with interacting...

The empirical tests of traditional structural models of credit risk tend to indicate that such models have been unsuccessful in the modeling of credit spreads. To address these negative findings some authors introduce single-factor stochastic volatility specifications and/or jumps.In the yield...

Basel III introduces new capital charges for CVA. These charges, and the Basel 2.5 default capital charge can be mitigated by CDS. Therefore, to price in the capital relief that CDS contracts provide, we introduce a CDS pricing model with three legs: premium; default protection; and capital...

This paper uses a sample of 2,186 credit default swap (CDS) spreads quoted in the European market during the period 2002–2009 to empirically analyze which model – accounting- or market-based – better explains corporate credit risk. We find little difference in the explanatory power of...

We devise simulation/regression numerical schemes for pricing the CVA on CDO tranches, where CVA stands for Credit Valuation Adjustment, or price correction accounting for the defaultability of a counterparty in an OTC derivatives transaction. This is done in the setup of a continuous-time...

We analyze the market price of counterparty risk and develop an arbitrage-free pricing valuation framework, inclusive of collateral mitigation. We show that the adjustment is given by the sum of option payoff terms, depending on the netted exposure, i.e. the difference between the on-default...

We study in this article the pricing of a derivate contract in presence of both counterparty risk and collateral posting rules. We come up with a new pricing framework that generalizes the works of Piterbarg and Kjaer-Burgard. An application to a Total Return Swap will show that hard numerical...

Is an option to early terminate a swap at its market value worth zero? At first sight it is, but in presence of counterparty risk it depends on the criteria used to determine such market value. In case of a single uncollateralised swap transaction under ISDA between two defaultable...

A model-based assessment of credit risk is subject to both specification and calibration errors. Focusing on a well known credit risk model, we propose a methodology for quantifying the relative importance of alternative sources of such errors and apply this methodology to a large data set. We...

This paper develops a structural model for the valuation of sovereign debt in which a sovereign country faces a strategic default decision under the risk of experiencing a banking crisis. The sovereign's default policy is governed by the trade-off between lower debt-servicing expenditures and...