Measuring the financial soundness of U.S. firms, 1926-2012

Andrew Atkeson, Andrea Eisfeldt and Pierre-Olivier Weill

No 484, Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: Building on the Merton (1974) and Leland (1994) structural models of credit risk, we develop a simple, transparent, and robust method for measuring the financial soundness of individual firms using data on their equity volatility. We use this method to retrace quantitatively the history of firms? financial soundness during U.S. business cycles over most of the last century. We highlight three main findings. First, the three worst recessions between 1926 and 2012 coincided with insolvency crises, but other recessions did not. Second, fluctuations in asset volatility appear to drive variation in firms? financial soundness. Finally, the financial soundness of financial firms largely resembles that of nonfinancial firms.

Keywords: Business; cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring the financial soundness of U.S. firms, 1926–2012 (2017)
Working Paper: Measuring the Financial Soundness of U.S. Firms, 1926-2012 (2013)
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