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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 11.
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Working Paper
Asymmetric Information, Dynamic Debt Issuance, and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads
We propose a tractable model of a firm?s dynamic debt and equity issuance policies in the presence of asymmetric information. Because ?investment-grade? firms can access debt markets, managers who observe a bad private signal can both conceal this information and shield shareholders from infusing capital into the firm by issuing new debt to service existing debt, thus avoiding default. The implication is that the ?asymmetric information channel? can generate jumps to default (from the creditors? perspective) only for those "high-yield" firms that have exhausted their ability to borrow. ...
Working Paper
Can standard preferences explain the prices of out-of-the-money S&P 500 put options?
The 1987 stock market crash occurred with minimal impact on observable economic variables (e.g., consumption), yet dramatically and permanently changed the shape of the implied volatility curve for equity index options. Here, we propose a general equilibrium model that captures many salient features of the U.S. equity and options markets before, during, and after the crash. The representative agent is endowed with Epstein-Zin preferences and the aggregate dividend and consumption processes are driven by a persistent stochastic growth variable that can jump. In reaction to a market crash, the ...
Working Paper
Portfolio choice over the life-cycle when the stock and labor markets are cointegrated
We study portfolio choice when labor income and dividends are cointegrated. Economically plausible calibrations suggest young investors should take substantial short positions in the stock market. Because of cointegration the young agent's human capital effectively becomes.
Working Paper
Optimal Debt Dynamics, Issuance Costs, and Commitment
We investigate optimal capital structure and debt maturity policies in the presence of fixed issuance costs. We identify the global-optimal policy that generates the highest values of equity across all states of nature consistent with limited liability. The optimal policy without commitment provides almost as much tax benefits to debt as does the global-optimal policy and, in the limit of vanishing issuance costs, allows firms to extract 100% of EBIT. This limiting case does not converge to the equilibrium of DeMarzo and He (2019), who report no tax benefits to debt when issuance costs are ...
Report
On bounding credit event risk premia
Reduced-form models of default that attribute a large fraction of credit spreads to compensation for credit event risk typically preclude the most plausible economic justification for such risk to be priced--namely, a ?contagious? response of the market portfolio during the credit event. When this channel is introduced within a general equilibrium framework for an economy comprised of a large number of firms, credit event risk premia have an upper bound of just a few basis points and are dwarfed by the contagion premium. We provide empirical evidence supporting the view that credit event risk ...
Working Paper
Explaining asset pricing puzzles associated with the 1987 market crash
The 1987 market crash was associated with a dramatic and permanent steepening of the implied volatility curve for equity index options, despite minimal changes in aggregate consumption. We explain these events within a general equilibrium framework in which expected endowment growth and economic uncertainty are subject to rare jumps. The arrival of a jump triggers the updating of agents' beliefs about the likelihood of future jumps, which produces a market crash and a permanent shift in option prices. Consumption and dividends remain smooth, and the model is consistent with salient features ...
Working Paper
Modeling credit contagion via the updating of fragile beliefs
We propose a tractable equilibrium model for pricing defaultable bonds that are subject to contagion risk. Contagion arises because agents with ?fragile beliefs? are uncertain about both the underlying state of the economy and the posterior probabilities associated with these states. As such, agents adopt a robust decision rule for updating that leads them to over-weight the posterior probabilities of ?bad? states. We estimate the model using panel data on sovereign Euro-zone CDS spreads during the recent crisis, and find that it captures levels and dynamics of spreads better than traditional ...
Working Paper
Debt Dynamics with Fixed Issuance Costs
We investigate equilibrium debt dynamics for a firm that cannot commit to a future debt policy and is subject to a fixed restructuring cost. We formally characterize equilibria when the firm is not required to repurchase outstanding debt prior to issuing additional debt. For realistic values of issuance costs and debt maturity, the no-commitment policy generates tax benefits that are similar to those obtained by a benchmark policy with commitment. For positive but arbitrarily small issuance costs, there are maturities for which shareholders extract essentially the entire claim to cash-flows.
Journal Article
Can structural models of default explain the credit spread puzzle?
This Economic Letter discusses why standard versions of structural models of default tend to underpredict the level of risk premiums and variations in those premiums over time. Drawing on recent research, the Letter suggests modifications to these standard models in order to better explain historical levels and time variations of corporate bond spreads.
Journal Article
Lifecycle investment decisions and labor income risk
The optimal proportion of financial wealth placed in stocks versus risk-free bonds changes over an investor's life and is very sensitive to the long-run correlation between stock returns and labor income. If this correlation is assumed to be high, then the optimal proportion of stock is hump-shaped and approximately zero for young agents, in contrast to the claims of financial advisers and most academic models.