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Working Paper
Estimation of risk-neutral and statistical densities by Hermite polynomial approximation: with an application to Eurodollar futures options
This paper expands and tests the approach of Madan and Milne (1994) for pricing contingent claims as elements of a separable Hilbert space. We specialize the Hilbert space basis to the family of Hermite polynomials and use the model to price options on Eurodollar futures. Restrictions on the prices of Hermite polynomial risk for contingent claims with different times to maturity are derived. These restrictions are rejected by our empirical tests of a four-parameter model. The unrestricted results indicate skewness and excess kurtosis in the implied risk-neutral density. These characteristics ...
Working Paper
Understanding the role of recovery in default risk models: empirical comparisons and implied recovery rates
This article presents a framework for modeling defaultable debt under alternative recovery conventions (for a wide class of processes describing recovery rates and default probability). These debt models have the ability to differentiate the impact of recovery rates and default probability, and can be utilized to invert the market expectation of recovery rates implicit in bond prices. Among potential applications, the framework can be used for pricing and hedging credit derivatives that are contingent on the default event and/or recovery levels. Empirical implementation of these models ...
Working Paper
Pricing S&P 500 index options using a Hilbert space basis
This paper tests the approach of Madan and Milne (1994) and its extension in Abken, Madan, and Ramamurtie (1996) for pricing contingent claims as elements of a separable Hilbert space. We specialize the Hilbert space basis to the family of Hermite polynomials and test the model on S&P 500 index options. Restrictions on the prices of Hermite polynomial risk are imposed that allow all option maturity classes to be used in estimation. These restrictions are rejected by our empirical tests of a four-parameter specification of the model. Nevertheless, the unrestricted four-parameter model, based ...
Conference Paper
Risky debt prices and term-structure of credit spreads
Working Paper
Investigating the sources of default risk: lessons from empirically evaluating credit risk models
From a credit risk perspective, little is known about the distress factors -- economy-wide or firm-specific -- that are important in explaining variations in defaultable coupon yields. This paper proposes and empirically tests a family of credit risk models. Empirically, we find that firm-specific distress factors play a role (beyond treasuries) in explaining defaultable coupon bond yields. Credit risk models that take into consideration leverage and book-to-market are found to reduce out-of-sample yield fitting errors (for the majority of firms). Moreover, the empirical evidence suggests ...