Modeling the effect of macroeconomic factors on corporate default and credit rating transitions

Stephen Figlewski, Halina Frydman and Weijian Liang

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2012, vol. 21, issue 1, 87-105

Abstract: We explore how general economic conditions impact defaults and major credit rating changes by fitting reduced-form Cox intensity models with a broad range of macroeconomic and firm-specific ratings-related variables. For all corporate issuers in the period 1981–2002 we find both types of factors strongly influenced the risk of a credit event. However, while the effects of ratings-related factors were consistent with expectations and very robust under different specifications, significance levels and even signs for the macro variable coefficients depended heavily on which other variables were included. This sheds light on the disparate results reported in earlier studies.

Keywords: Credit risk; Cox model; Default risk; Intensity model; Bond ratings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 G24 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056011000670
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reveco:v:21:y:2012:i:1:p:87-105

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2011.05.004

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().