Credit default swaps (CDS) played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008. While CDS can be used to hedge risks, they can also be used for speculative purposes (as occurred during the financial crisis) and regulations have been proposed to limit such speculative use. Here, we provide...

An important feature of bond markets is the relationship between initial public offering prices and the probability of the issuer defaulting. First, this probability affects the bond prices. Second, IPO prices determine the default probability. Though market equilibrium has been shown to predict...

We use two different nonparametric methods to determine whether there were multiple regimes in U.S. monetary policy over the period 1955-2003. We model monetary policy using two different versions of Taylor's rule for the nominal interest-rate target. By contrast with parametric tests for regime...

We study a model of economic growth and development with a threshold externality. The model has one steady state with a low and stagnant level of income per capita and another steady state with a high and growing level of income per capita. Both of these steady states are locally stable under...