Rating agencies claim to look through the cycle when assigning corporate credit ratings, which entails that they are able to separate trend components of default risk from transitory ones. To test whether agencies possess this competence, I take market-based estimates of 1-year default...

The volatility of an asset price measures how uncertain we are about future asset price movements. It is one of the factors affecting option price and the only input into the Black–Scholes model that cannot be directly observed. Thus, estimating volatility properly is vital. Two approaches to...

In this paper we construct a kernel estimator of a periodic signal when the observation follows the model dζt=f(t)dt+σ(t)dWt, where f,σ:R→R are continuous periodic and {Wt,t≥0} is a Brownian motion. We state its consistency as well as the asymptotic normality.

The authors' empirical results indicate that default risk has some power to explain equity returns on the Taiwanese stock market, but it does not contain other important price information uncorrelated with the prevailing three or four risk factor models. Furthermore, compared to the U.S. market,...

This paper considers a market containing both continuous and discrete noise. Modest assumptions ensure the existence of a growth optimal portfolio. Non-negative self-financing trading strategies, when benchmarked by this portfolio, are local martingales under the real-world measure. This...

This paper investigates the determinants of credit spreads (levels and changes) via credit derivatives, using an Australian sample. We incorporate a number of different relationships to assess the contributions of various market-wide and firm-specific factors in determining levels, and changes...

We determine the optimal allocation of funds between the fixed and variable subaccounts in a variable annuity with a GMDB (Guaranteed Minimum Death Benefit) clause featuring partial withdrawals by using a utility-based approach. The Merton method is applied by assuming that individuals allocate...