We investigate the interaction of volatility smiles and liquidity in the euro (not;) interest rate option markets, using daily bid and ask prices of interest rate caps/floors. We find that liquidity variables have significant explanatory power for both curvature and asymmetry of the implied...

Recent work has suggested that strategic underperformance of debt-service obligations by equity holders can resolve the gap between observed yield spreads and those generated by Merton (1974)-style models. We show that this is not quite correct. The value of the option to underperform on...

The objective of this paper is to provide a deeper insight into the links between financial markets and the real economy. To that end, we study the short-term anticipation and response of U.S. stock, Treasury, and corporate bond markets to the first release of U.S. macroeconomic information....

We consider the demand for state contingent claims in the presence of a zeromean, non-hedgeable background risk. An agent is defined to be generalized risk averse if he/she reacts to an increase in background risk by choosing a demand function for contingent claims with a smaller slope. We show...

This paper demonstrates that an an institutional feature inherent in amultitude of mutual funds managing billions in assets generates fund NAVs that reect stale prices. Since, in many cases, investors can trade at these NAVs with little or no transactions costs, there is an obvious...

We present a cash flows based model of corporate debt valuation that incorporates two novel features. First, we allow for the separation and optimal determination of the firm's debt-service and dividend policies; in particular, the rm is allowed to maintain cash reserves to meet future debt...

This paper examines the static and dynamic accuracy of interest rate option pricing models in the U.S. dollar interest rate cap and floor markets. We evaluate alternative one-factor and two-factor term structure models of the spot and the forward interest rates on the basis of their...

We build a multi-factor model of the term structure of spot interest rates. The stochastic factors are the short-term interest rate and the premia of the future rates over the short-term interest rate. In the three-factor version of the model, for example, the first-factor is the three month...

In this paper, we investigate the pricing of Japanese yen interest rate swaps during the period 1990-96. We obtain measures of the spreads of the swap rates over comparable Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) for different maturities and analyze the relationship between the swap spreads and credit...

We consider the demand for state contingent claims in the presence of a zero-mean, non-hedgeable background risk. An agent is defined to be generalized risk averse if he/she reacts to an increase in background risk by choosing a demand function for contingent claims with a smaller slope. We show...