IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecj/ac2003/207.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Merton Model Approach to Assessing the Default Risk of UK Public Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Tudela, Merxe

    (Bank of England)

  • Garry Young

Abstract

This paper shows how a Merton-model approach can be used to develop measures of the probability of failure of quoted UK companies. Probability estimates are constructed for a group of failed companies and their properties as leading indicators of failure assessed. Probability estimates of failure for a control group of surviving companies are also constructed. These are used in Probit-regressions to evaluate the information content of the Merton-based estimates relative to information available in company accounts. The paper shows that there is much useful information in the Merton-style estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Tudela, Merxe & Garry Young, 2003. "A Merton Model Approach to Assessing the Default Risk of UK Public Companies," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 207, Royal Economic Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:ac2003:207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/res2003/Tudela.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geroski,Paul A. & Gregg,Paul, 1997. "Coping with Recession," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521622769, October.
    2. Pierre Collin-Dufresn & Robert S. Goldstein & J. Spencer Martin, 2001. "The Determinants of Credit Spread Changes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2177-2207, December.
    3. Black, Fischer & Cox, John C, 1976. "Valuing Corporate Securities: Some Effects of Bond Indenture Provisions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 351-367, May.
    4. Saikat Nandi, 1998. "Valuation models for default-risky securities: An overview," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 83(Q 4), pages 22-35.
    5. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1995. "A Simple Approach to Valuing Risky Fixed and Floating Rate Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 789-819, July.
    6. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    7. Briys, Eric & de Varenne, François, 1997. "Valuing Risky Fixed Rate Debt: An Extension," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(2), pages 239-248, June.
    8. McFadden, Daniel, 1974. "The measurement of urban travel demand," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 303-328, November.
    9. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    10. John G. Cragg & Russell S. Uhler, 1970. "The Demand for Automobiles," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 3(3), pages 386-406, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maclachlan, Iain C, 2007. "An empirical study of corporate bond pricing with unobserved capital structure dynamics," MPRA Paper 28416, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Stephanie Heck, 2022. "Corporate bond yields and returns: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 36(2), pages 179-201, June.
    3. Carolina Castagnetti & Eduardo Rossi, 2013. "Euro Corporate Bond Risk Factors," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 372-391, April.
    4. repec:wyi:journl:002109 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Qiang Dai & Kenneth Singleton, 2003. "Term Structure Dynamics in Theory and Reality," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 631-678, July.
    6. Augusto Castillo, 2004. "Firm and Corporate Bond Valuation: A Simulation Dynamic Programming Approach," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 41(124), pages 345-360.
    7. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    8. Samuel Chege Maina, 2011. "Credit Risk Modelling in Markovian HJM Term Structure Class of Models with Stochastic Volatility," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2011, January-A.
    9. Ericsson, Jan & Reneby, Joel, 2003. "Valuing Corporate Liabilities," SIFR Research Report Series 15, Institute for Financial Research.
    10. Viral Acharya & Sergei A. Davydenko & Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2012. "Cash Holdings and Credit Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(12), pages 3572-3609.
    11. Hoi Ying Wong & Tsz Wang Choi, 2009. "Estimating default barriers from market information," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 187-196.
    12. Ericsson, Jan & Jacobs, Kris & Oviedo, Rodolfo, 2009. "The Determinants of Credit Default Swap Premia," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 109-132, February.
    13. Barbedo, Claudio Henrique da Silveira & Lemgruber, Eduardo Facó, 2009. "A down-and-out exchange option model with jumps to evaluate firms' default probabilities in Brazil," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 179-190, September.
    14. Sheen X. Liu & Howard Qi & Chunchi Wu, 2006. "Personal Taxes, Endogenous Default, and Corporate Bond Yield Spreads," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(6), pages 939-954, June.
    15. van Landschoot, A., 2003. "The Term Structure of Credit Spreads on Euro Corporate Bonds," Discussion Paper 2003-046, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Hui, C.H. & Lo, C.F. & Huang, M.X., 2006. "Are corporates' target leverage ratios time-dependent?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 220-236.
    17. Zimmermann, Paul, 2021. "The role of the leverage effect in the price discovery process of credit markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    18. Abudy, Menachem Meni & Raviv, Alon, 2016. "How much can illiquidity affect corporate debt yield spread?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 58-69.
    19. Samir Kadiric & Arthur Korus, 2019. "The effects of Brexit on credit spreads: Evidence from UK and Eurozone corporate bond markets," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 65-102, March.
    20. Chi-Fai Lo & Cho-Hoi Hui, 2016. "Pricing Corporate Bonds With Interest Rates Following Double Square-root Process," Working Papers 112016, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    21. Viral V. Acharya & Jennifer N. Carpenter, 2002. "Corporate Bond Valuation and Hedging with Stochastic Interest Rates and Endogenous Bankruptcy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1355-1383.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Merton models; corporate failure; implied default probabilities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecj:ac2003:207. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.