Using migration data of a rating agency, this paper attempts to quantify the impact of macroeconomic conditions on credit-rating migrations. The migrations are modeled as a coupled Markov chain, where the macroeconomic factors are represented by unobserved tendency variables. In the simplest case, these binary random variables are static and credit-class-specific. A generalization treats tenden...

In this paper we formulate a corporate bond (CB) pricing model for deriving the term structure of default probabilities (TSDP) and the recovery rate (RR) for each pair of industry factor and credit rating grade, and these derived TSDP and RR are regarded as what investors imply in forming CB prices in the market at each time. A unique feature of this formulation is that the model allows each fi...

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of credit default swap (CDS) spread for the Japanese market, which is one of the major CDS markets in the world. Our assessment of literature indicates that there is a lack of related empirical research using data from the Japanese market. By analyzing data from 2001 to 2004, the empirical results show that the theoretical determinants, including l...

This version of the paper is extremely preliminary. Please do not reproduce or send the paper to others without the permission of the authors. at Dallas for their helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge Dan Konigsburg and Standard and Poors' for their cooperation and help and for providing us access to RatingsDirect. Abstract This paper examines the effects that hedge fund activism has on e...

In its complexity and its vulnerability to market volatility, the CPDO might be viewed as the poster child for the excesses of financial engineering in the credit market. This paper examines the CPDO as a case study in model risk in the rating of complex structured products. We demonstrate that the models used by S&P and Moody’s would have assigned very low probability to the spread levels real...

Currently, in Iran's banking system, non-repayment of facilities has become one of the biggest issues, and due to the lack of a proper system for proper allocation of facilities, they face a number of problems, including the problem of allocation of loans, the problem of failure to repay loans Of the central bank, or the amount of facilities increased from the amount of reimbursement. The solut...

Prior research documents significant negative long-term stock returns following bond-rating downgrades. Some downgraded firms are placed on credit watches before downgrades, and we find that the post-downgrade stock underperformance of such firms is significantly reduced. We explore two explanations for the difference in post-downgrade stock performance that are not mutually exclusive: (a) a cr...

This paper analyzes the relationship between structured finance par coupon spreads at issuance and the securities' credit performance. Using structured finance securities including asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations issued in the U.S. during 1998-2004, we find spreads vary substantially by rating, over time, and across asset classes; the spreads on s...

This paper investigates the finite-sample behaviour of sovereign credit migration estimators and analyzes the properties of the rating process. Through bootstrap simulations, we compare a discrete multinomial estimator and two continuous hazard rate methods which differ in that one neglects time heterogeneity in the rating process whereas the other accounts for it. The study is based on Moody’s...