Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

ON THE PRICING OF CORPORATE DEBT: THE RISK STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES *

ON THE PRICING OF CORPORATE DEBT: THE RISK STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES * I. I ntroduction T he value of a particular issue of corporate debt depends essentially on three items: (1) the required rate of return on riskless (in terms of default) debt (e.g., government bonds or very high grade corporate bonds); (2) the various provisions and restrictions contained in the indenture (e.g., maturity date, coupon rate, call terms, seniority in the event of default, sinking fund, etc.); (3) the probability that the firm will be unable to satisfy some or all of the indenture requirements (i.e., the probability of default). While a number of theories and empirical studies has been published on the term structure of interest rates (item 1), there has been no systematic development of a theory for pricing bonds when there is a significant probability of default. The purpose of this paper is to present such a theory which might be called a theory of the risk structure of interest rates. The use of the term “risk” is restricted to the possible gains or losses to bondholders as a result of (unanticipated) changes in the probability of default and does not include the gains or losses inherent to all bonds caused by (unanticipated) changes in interest http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of Finance Wiley

ON THE PRICING OF CORPORATE DEBT: THE RISK STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES *

The Journal of Finance , Volume 29 (2) – May 1, 1974

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/on-the-pricing-of-corporate-debt-the-risk-structure-of-interest-rates-D0QytDVus6

References (20)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
1974 The American Finance Association
ISSN
0022-1082
eISSN
1540-6261
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.1974.tb03058.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

I. I ntroduction T he value of a particular issue of corporate debt depends essentially on three items: (1) the required rate of return on riskless (in terms of default) debt (e.g., government bonds or very high grade corporate bonds); (2) the various provisions and restrictions contained in the indenture (e.g., maturity date, coupon rate, call terms, seniority in the event of default, sinking fund, etc.); (3) the probability that the firm will be unable to satisfy some or all of the indenture requirements (i.e., the probability of default). While a number of theories and empirical studies has been published on the term structure of interest rates (item 1), there has been no systematic development of a theory for pricing bonds when there is a significant probability of default. The purpose of this paper is to present such a theory which might be called a theory of the risk structure of interest rates. The use of the term “risk” is restricted to the possible gains or losses to bondholders as a result of (unanticipated) changes in the probability of default and does not include the gains or losses inherent to all bonds caused by (unanticipated) changes in interest

Journal

The Journal of FinanceWiley

Published: May 1, 1974

There are no references for this article.