Hedging Double Barriers with Singles

Double barrier options provide risk managers with good-deal flexibility in tailoring portfolio returns.Their hedges offer full protection only if unwound along the barriers.This work provides non-dynamic hedges that project the risk of double barriers on to single barriers.Non-dynamic hedges overcome bulky transaction costs due to dynamic hedging trades.That projection implies that two single barriers written on the double barrier corridor extrema are often a comfortable, even if imperfect, hedge.Such a hedge is simple and gives automatic protection along the barriers.Automatic protection overcomes trading issues along the barriers.hedging

Structural RFV: Recovery Form and Defaultable Debt Analysis

Receiving the same fractional recovery of par at default for bonds of the same issuer and seniority, regardless of remaining maturity, has been labelled in the academic literature as a Recovery of Face Value at Default (RFV).Such a recovery form results from language found in typical bond indentures and is supported by empirical evidence from defaulted bond values.We incorporate RFV into an exogenous boundary structural credit risk model and compare its e ect to more typical recovery forms found in such models.We find that the chosen recovery form can significantly a ect valuation and the sensitivities produced by these models, thus having important implications for empirical studies attempting to validate structural credit risk models.We show that some features of existing structural models are a result of the recovery form assumed in the model and do not necessarily hold under an RFV recovery form.Some of our results complement those found in the literature which examines the endogeneity of the default boundary.We find that some features that may have been solely attributed to modelling the boundary as an optimal decision by the firm can be obtained in an exogenous boundary framework with RFV.This has direct implications for studies which attempt to determine whether endogenous or exogenous models are better supported empirically.We extend our results to incorporate a multifactor default-free term structure model and examine the impact of the recovery form in estimating the cost of debt capital within a structural model framework.bonds;credit;risk;capital costs;debt

Equilibrium Asset Pricing with Time-Varying Pessimism

capital asset pricing;general equilibrium;uncertainty;financial risk;model misspecification;Knightian uncertainty;first order risk aversion

Close-Form Pricing of Benchmark Equity Default Swaps Under the CEV Assumption

Equity Default Swaps are new equity derivatives designed as a product for credit investors.Equipped with a novel pricing result, we provide closedform values that give an analytic contribution to the viability of cross-asset trading related to credit risk.Cross-Asset Trading of Credit Risk;Constant-Elasticity-of-Variance (CEV) Diffusion

The Value of Fighting Irreversible Demise by Softening the Irreversible Cost

We study a novel issue in the real-options-based technology innovation literature by means of double barrier contingent claims analysis.We show how much a ¯rm with the monopoly over a project is willing to spend in investment technology innovation that softens the irreversible cost of accessing the project before its irreversible demise.The answer depends on the project's characteristics and on the e®ectiveness demanded from technology innovation.Double barrier options;cost irreversibility;demise irreversibility;technology innovation

Analytic American Option Pricing and Applications

I use a convenient value breakdown in order to obtain analytic solutions for finitematurity American option prices.Such a barrier-option-based breakdown yields an analytic lower bound for the American option price, which is as price-tight as the Barone-Adesi and Whaley (1987) analytic value proxy for short and medium maturities and exhibits good convergence to the Merton (1973) perpetual option price for large maturities.

Assessing Credit with Equity: A CEV Model with Jump to Default

Unlike in structural and reduced-form models, we use equity as a liquid and observable primitive to analytically value corporate bonds and credit default swaps.Restrictive assumptions on the .rm.s capital structure are avoided.Default is parsimoniously represented by equity value hitting the zero barrier either diffusively or with a jump, which implies non-zero credit spreads for short maturities.Easy cross-asset hedging is enabled.By means of a tersely speci.ed pricing kernel, we also make analytic credit-risk management possible under systematic jump-to-default risk.Equity;Corporate Bonds;Credit Default Swaps;Constant-Elasticity-of-Variance (CEV) Diffusion;Jump to Default