We develop a simple robust link between deep out-of-the-money American put options on a company’s stock and a credit insurance contract on the company’s bond. We assume that the stock price stays above a barrier B before default but drops below a lower barrier A after default, thus generating a default corridor [A, B] that the stock price can never enter. Given the presence of this default corr...

We use the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation approach to estimate the default barriers from market values of equities for a sample of 762 public industrial Canadian firms. The ML approach allows us to estimate the asset instantaneous drift, volatility and barrier level simultaneously, when the firm’s equity is priced as a Down-and-Out European call (DOC) option. We find that the estimated barr...

This paper presents a simple reduce-form approach to pricing credit derivatives. The definition of default is purely based on the market value of a risky bond and its potential recovery value. A risky bond is treated as a riskless bond with an embedded short position on a barrier option. The risky bond market implicitly prices this barrier option. The default implied volatility (DIV) curve for ...

This paper provides an alternative approach to the structural credit risk models. The first-passage-time approach extends the original Merton [Journal of Finance 29, 449-470] model by accounting for the fact that the default may occur not only at the debt’s maturity, but also prior to this date. Default happens when the firm value process crosses an exhaust barrier. In contrast, this paper defi...

‎The aim of this paper is to generalize the comprehensive structural model for defaultable fixed income bonds (considered in R‎. ‎Agliardi‎, ‎A comprehensive structural model for defaultable fixed-income bondsو Quant‎. ‎Finance 11 (2011)‎, ‎no‎. ‎5‎, ‎749--762.) into a comprehensive unified model of structural and reduced form models‎. ‎In our model the bond holders receive the deterministic co...

According to the adverse consequences that are brought by financial distress for companies, economy and financial –monetary institutions, the use of methods that can predict the occurrence of financial failure and prevent the loss of wealth is of great importance. The major models of credit risk assessment are based on retrospective information and using the methods which use the updated market...

incomplete information. In this model, investors observe neither a firm’s value nor its default barrier. The model takes into account the short-term risk inherent in default events, the market-wide impact of defaults on security prices due to counterparty relations among firms, and the cyclical default dependence effects observed in credit markets. We explicitly calculate the pricing trend and ...