Structural models of credit risk are known to present vanishing spreads at very short maturities. This shortcoming, which is due to the diffusive behavior assumed for asset values, can be circumvented by considering discontinuities of the jump type in their evolution over time. In particular, assuming a pure jump process. Moreover, when applied to market data diffusion-based structural models tend to produce too low spreads, even over longer horizons. In this paper we show that a jump process of the Variance-Gamma type for the asset value can also circumvent this practical shortcoming. We calibrate a terminal-default jump structural model to single-name data for the CDX NA IG and CDX NA HY components. We show that the VG model provides not only smaller errors, but also a better qualitative fit than other diffusive structural models. Indeed, it avoids both the spread underprediction of the classical Merton model and the excessive overpredictions of other well known diffusive models, as recently explored by Eom, Helwege, Huang (2004) or Demchuk and Gibson (2005).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 23 pages Date of creation: Jul 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:icr:wpmath:6-2006
Contact details of provider: Postal: Viale Settimio Severo, 63 - 10133 Torino - Italy Phone: +39 011 6604828 Fax: +39 011 6600082 Email: Web page: http://www.icer.it More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Alessandra Calosso).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)