An Empirical Analysis of the Pricing of Collateralized Debt Obligations

Francis Longstaff and Arvind Rajan

No 12210, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the pricing of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) using an extensive new data set for the actively-traded CDX credit index and its tranches. We find that a three-factor portfolio credit model allowing for firm-specific, industry, and economywide default events explains virtually all of the time-series and crosssectional variation in CDX index tranche prices. These tranches are priced as if losses of 0.4, 6, and 35 percent of the portfolio occur with expected frequencies of 1.2, 41.5, and 763 years, respectively. On average, 65 percent of the CDX spread is due to firm-specific default risk, 27 percent to clustered industry or sector default risk, and 8 percent to catastrophic or systemic default risk. Recently, however, firm-specific default risk has begun to play a larger role.

JEL-codes: G1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-fin, nep-fmk and nep-rmg
Note: AP
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published as Longstaff, Francis A. and Arvind Rajan. "An Empirical Analysis of the Pricing of Collateralized Debt Obligations." Journal of Finance 63, 2 (April 2008): 529-63.

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