Urn-based models for dependent credit risks and their calibration through EM algorithm

In this contribution we analyze two models for the joint probability of defaults of dependent credit risks that are based on a generalisation of Polya urn scheme. In particular we focus our attention on the problems related to the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters involved, and to this purpose we introduce an approach based on the use of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm. We show how to implement it in this context, and then we analyze the results obtained, comparing them with results obtained by other approaches.