We present a novel empirical benchmark for analyzing credit risk using “pseudo firms” that purchase traded assets financed with equity and zero-coupon bonds. By no-arbitrage, pseudo bonds are equivalent to Treasuries minus put options on pseudo-firm assets. Empirically, like corporate...

Abstract: In this paper we compare market prices of credit default swaps with model prices. We show that a simple reduced form model with a constant recovery rate outperforms the market practice of directly comparing bonds' credit spreads to default swap premiums. We find that the model works...

We discuss the finding that cross-sectional characteristic based models have yielded portfolios with higher excess monthly returns but lower risk than their arbitrage pricing theory counterparts in an analysis of equity returns of stocks listed on the JSE. Under the assumption of general...

Implicit in industry standard option pricing models is the expectation that roughly 25% of stocks with 60% consistent volatility will septuple within 10 years, an extraordinary rate of appreciation. The exceptionally high equilibrium anticipated returns for an improbably large percentage of high...

Focusing on Spanish firms, we investigate how investors incorporate the value of a firm's outstanding employee stock options (ESO hereafter) into its stock price. Aboody (1996) analyzes the same issue on US data, however our approach differs in two ways. First, we value ESO grants using Hull...

In this paper we consider various computational methods for pricing American style derivatives. We do so under both jump diffusion and stochastic volatility processes. We consider integral transform methods, the method of lines, operator-splitting, and the Crank-Nicolson scheme, the latter being...

There has recently been considerable interest in the potential adverse effects associated with excessive uncertainty in energy futures markets. Theoretical models of investment under uncertainty predict that increased uncertainty will tend to induce firms to delay production and investment....

If the creditworthiness of a counterparty is a derivative of a commodity price, there is the potential to have right- or wrong-way exposures in respective commodity transaction. Identifying them is important, because otherwise credit costs might be inadequately calculated and wrong incentives...

Debt is not frequently analyzed in relation to the conflict between controlling and outside shareholders. At the same time, debt helps to manage the type II corporate agency conflicts because it is easier for controlling shareholders to modify the leverage ratio than to modify their share of...

We outline the valuation process for a No-Negative Equity Guarantee in an Equity Release Mortgage loan and for an Equity Release Mortgage that has such a guarantee. Illustrative valuations are provided based on the Black '76 put pricing formula and mortality projections based on the M5, M6 and...