This paper examines the capability of firm fundamentals in explaining the cross-sectional variation of credit default swap (CDS) spreads. The paper constructs a fundamental-based CDS valuation by combining the Merton distance-to-default measure with a long list of firm fundamental...

The constant-maturity zero-coupon Treasury yield curve is one of the most studied datasets. We reconstruct the yield curve using a non-parametric kernel-smoothing method with a novel adaptive bandwidth specifically designed to fit the Treasury yield curve. Our curve is globally smooth while...

This paper introduces a generalized discrete time framework to evaluate the empirical performance of a wide variety of well-known models in capturing the dynamic behavior of short term interest rates. A new class of models which displays nonlinearity and asymmetry in the drift, and incorporates...

This paper investigates the impact of agents' expectations about future fundamental economic disturbances (news) on macroeconomic dynamics. Several intuitive tests provide insight into the information content of the yield curve and its' ability to identify these 'news' disturbances. Bayesian...

The growth optimal portfolio (GOP) plays an important role in finance, in particular in derivative pricing, where it is employed as a num\'eraire portfolio, allowing to price contingent claims directly under the real world probability measure. This paper derives an extension of a time dependent...

The main goal of this paper is to better understand the behavior of credit spreads in the past and the potential risk of unexpected future credit spread changes. One important consideration to note regarding credit spreads is the fact that bond spreads contain a liquidity premium, which...

In this paper we give a generalized model of the interest rates term structure including Nelson-Siegel and Svensson structure. For that we introduce a continuous m-factor exponential-polynomial form of forward interest rates and demonstrate its considerably better performance in a fitting of the...

This paper presents a new approach to deriving default intensities from CDS or bond spreads that yields smooth intensity curves required e.g. for pricing or risk management purposes. Assuming continuous premium or coupon payments, the default intensity can be obtained by solving an integral...

In this paper we propose a smooth transition tree model for both the conditional mean and the conditional variance of the short-term interest rate process. Our model incorporates the interpretability of regression trees and the flexibility of smooth transition models to describe regime switches...

Affine mortality models are well suited for theoretical and practical application in pricing and risk management of mortality risk. They produce consistent, closed-form stochastic survival curves allowing for the efficient valuation of mortality-linked claims. We model USA age-cohort mortality...