The purpose of this paper is to show how institutional and evolutionary economics provide better insights as to whysome firms survive and others do not than does neoclassical economics. At the heart of the evolutionary theory isthe view that new firms are a manifestation of diversity and that...

We value rating-triggered step-up bonds with three methods: (i) the Jarrow, Lando andTurnbull (1997, JLT) framework, (ii) a similar framework using historical probabilities and(iii) as plain vanilla bonds. We find that the market seems to value single step-up bondsaccording to the JLT model,...

Ibbotson's “Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation” data set is widely used because it provides monthly US financial data series going back to as early as 1926. In this data set, the “default premium” is calculated as the difference between the total returns on long-term corporate bonds and...