Earlier studies in the literature of politically connected firms and the “revolving door” of government officials to the private sector focused mostly on politicians and high-ranked civil servants. In this paper I comprehensively survey the transition of all ranks of government officials...

Structural credit risk models have faced difficulties in matching observed market credit spreads while simultaneously matching default rates, recoveries, leverage and risk premia - a shortcoming that has become known as the credit spread puzzle. We ask whether stochastic asset volatility, as an...

Structural credit risk models have faced difficulties in matching observed market credit spreads while simultaneously matching default rates, recoveries, leverage and risk premia - a shortcoming that has become known as the credit spread puzzle. We ask whether stochastic asset volatility, as an...

We investigate the impact of credit spreads on the stochastic duration and convexity of corporate bonds with respect to the same metrics for equivalent Treasury bonds. We show that the credit spread has two interacting effects on both the duration and the convexity of a corporate coupon bond as...

Holding companies legally separate the assets and owners of a company creating a layer of liability protection. Theoretically, this feature lowers the risk attributable to holding companies, enabling them to offer lower-cost debts compared to stand-alone alternatives. However, no study has ever...