Using more than two years of daily interest rate cap price data, this paper provides a systematic documentation of a volatility smile in cap prices. We find that Black (1976) implied volatilities exhibit an asymmetric smile (sometimes called a sneer) with a stronger skew for in-the-money caps...

Based on a multivariate extension of the constrained locally polynomial estimator of Aït-Sahalia and Duarte (2003), we provide one of the first nonparametric estimates of probability densities of LIBOR rates under forward martingale measures and state-price densities (SPDs) implicit in interest...

Coval, Jurek, and Stafford (2009, CJS hereafter) claim that senior CDX tranches, which resemble economic catastrophe bonds, are overpriced relative to index options. We show that this result is due to their problematic calibration procedure and restrictive model assumptions. A simple correction...

Based on a reduced-form model of credit risk, we explore mispricing in the CDS spreads of North American companies and its economic content. Specifically, we develop a trading strategy using the model to trade out of sample market-neutral portfolios across the term structure of CDS contracts....