Strategic default behavior suggests that the default process is not only a matter of inability to pay. Economic costs and benefits affect the incidence and timing of defaults. As with prior research, the authors find that people default strategically as their home value falls below the mortgage...

We study the representative consumer's risk attitude and efficient risk-sharing rules in a single-period, single-good economy in which consumers have homogeneous probabilistic beliefs but heterogeneous risk attitudes. We prove that if all consumers have convex absolute risk tolerance, so must...

This paper examines the unique ability of The Model: a structural credit risk model proposed in Buellesbach (2015), to match the market in ways unmatched by other well-known structural models. The Model demonstrates the capacity to accurately value firms' equity and debt across the entire credit...

Contracts with embedded prepayment/extension options are subject to behavioral risk, due to the unpredictable exercise strategy followed by the option holder. Empirical data show that, in many situations and for different reasons, investors do not act purely on the strength of financial...

I show that the habit model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999) does not produce rising volatility during recessions when it is solved accurately. Instead, volatility is a hump-shaped function of the model's state and recessions are characterized by falling volatility. Risk premia are substantially...

We study the problem of optimal timing to buy/sell derivatives by a risk-averse agent in incomplete markets. Adopting the exponential utility indifference valuation, we investigate this timing flexibility and the associated delayed purchase premium. This leads to a stochastic control and optimal...

This paper studies economies with complete markets where there is positive default on consumer debt. In a simple tractable two-period model, households can default partially, at a finite punishment cost, and competitive intermediaries price loans of different sizes separately. This environment...