Using 3 years of interest rate caps price data, we provide a comprehensive documentation of volatility smiles in the caps market. To capture the volatility smiles, we develop a multifactor term structure model with stochastic volatility and jumps that yields a closed-form formula for cap prices....

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...

Most existing dynamic term structure models assume that interest rate derivatives are redundant securities and can be perfectly hedged using solely bonds. We find that the quadratic term structure models have serious difficulties in hedging caps and cap straddles, even though they capture bond...

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...

Downside loss-averse preferences have seen a resurgence in the portfolio management literature. This is due to the increasing use of derivatives in managing equity portfolios and the increased use of quantitative techniques for bond portfolio management. We employ the lower partial moment as a...

We develop a reduced-form approach for valuing callable corporate bonds by characterizing the call probability via an intensity process. Asymmetric information and market frictions justify the existence of a call-arrival intensity from the market's perspective. Our approach both extends the...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We offer the first empirical evidence on the adverse effect of credit default swap (CDS) coverage on subprime mortgage defaults. Using a large database of privately securitized mortgages, we find that higher defaults concentrate in mortgage pools with concurrent CDS...</p>