Equity returns and fi rm's default probability are strictly interrelated financial measures capturing the credit risk profi le of a fi rm. Following the idea proposed in [20] we use high-frequency equity prices in order to estimate the volatility risk component of a fi rm within Merton [17]...

We propose a new methodology based on Fourier analysis to estimate the fourth power of the volatility function (spot quarticity) and, as a byproduct, the integrated function. We prove the consistency of the proposed estimator of the integrated quarticity. Further, we analyse its efficiency in...