In this paper we succinctly outline the modeling approach of Moody's for private firm default prediction. The processes of transforming ratios, weighting the transformations, and mapping to a default probability are examined. Accounting ratios in the US, Canada, and Australia are compared and...

Common explanations of the low volatility anomaly involve biases or frictions that cause investors to overpay for high volatility assets, giving them a negative alpha within the CAPM model, yet currently all such mechanisms are either heuristic or partial equilibrium. This paper shows that...

Empirically, standard, intuitive measures of risk like volatility and beta do not generate a positive correlation with average returns in most asset classes. It is possible that risk, however defined, is not positively related to return as an equilibrium in asset markets. This paper presents a...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) predicts a positive relation between risk and return, but empirical studies find the actual relation to be flat, or even negative. This paper provides a broad overview of explanations for this ‘volatility effect' that have been proposed in different...