We examine whether and how payout policy affects credit risk using evidence from the default swap (CDS) market. CDS spreads increase substantially in response to announcements of dividend cuts, especially during recessions among firms experiencing financial distress. also react more strongly permanent less anticipated cuts. The size reaction is pronounced for firms, which are inherently opaque....

In this paper, we will explain how to perfectly hedge under Heston’s stochastic volatility 17 model with jump-to-default, which is in itself a generalization of the Merton jump-todefault model and a special case of the Heston model with jumps. The hedging instru19 ments we use to build the hedge will be as usual the stock and the bond, but also the Variance Swap (VS) and a Credit Default Swap (...

In this paper, we apply the meshfree radial basis function (RBF) interpolation to numerically approximate zero-coupon bond prices and survival probabilities in order to price credit default swap (CDS) contracts. We assume that the interest rate follows a Cox-Ingersoll-Ross process while the default intensity is described by the Exponential-Vasicek model. Several numerical experiments are conduc...

This paper focuses on sovereign credit risk meaning a hot topic related to the current Eurozone crisis. In the light of the recent financial crisis, market perception of the creditworthiness of individual sovereigns has changed significantly. Before the outbreak of the financial crisis, market participants did not differentiate between credit risk born by individual states despite different lev...

We introduce a discrete time no-arbitrage model with observable covariates, which allows for a closed form solution for the value of credit default swaps (CDS). The default intensity is speci…ed as a quadratic function of the covariates, ensuring that the intensity function is always positive. The model yields economically plausible results in terms of …t, sign of coe¢ cients and statistical si...

We use Google internet search volumes to measure households’ pessimism about overall market-wide credit health in the economy and show that this “household default sentiment” is positively correlated with swap (CDS) spread level market. However, while household sentiment might drive cost of some degree, either directly or indirectly through its effect on stock market, we find market’s opinion r...

This paper examines the risk and return of the so-called capital structure arbitrage, which exploits the mispricing between a company’s debt and equity. Specifically, a structural model provides a connection between a company’s equity price and its credit default swap (CDS) spread. Based on the deviation of CDS market quotes from their theoretical counterparts, a convergence-type trading strate...

We analyse daily lead-lag patterns in US equity and credit default swap (CDS) returns. We first document that equity returns robustly lead CDS returns. However, we find that the CDSlag is due to common (and not firm-specific) news and arises predominantly in response to positive (instead of negative) equity market news. We provide an explanation for this newsspecific price discovery based on de...

In this paper a simulation approach for defaultable yield curves is developed within the Heath et al. (1992) framework. The default event is modelled using the Cox process where the stochastic intensity represents the credit spread. The forward credit spread volatility function is affected by the entire credit spread term structure. The paper provides the defaultable bond and credit default swa...

We propose a model which can be jointly calibrated to the corporate bond term structure and equity option volatility surface of the same company. Our purpose is to obtain explicit bond and equity option pricing formulas that can be calibrated to find a risk neutral model that matches a set of observed market prices. This risk neutral model can then be used to price more exotic, illiquid or over...