Default Recovery Rates in Credit Risk Modeling: A Review of the Literature and Empirical Evidence
33 Pages Posted: 5 Nov 2008
Date Written: December 2003
Abstract
Evidence from many countries in recent years suggests that collateral values and recovery rates on corporate defaults can be volatile and, moreover, that they tend to go down just when the number of defaults goes up in economic downturns. This link between recovery rates and default rates has traditionally been neglected by credit risk models, as most of them focused on default risk and adopted static loss assumptions, treating the recovery rate either as a constant parameter or as a stochastic variable independent from the probability of default. This traditional focus on default analysis has been partly reversed by the recent significant increase in the number of studies dedicated to the subject of recovery rate estimation and the relationship between default and recovery rates. This paper presents a detailed review of the way credit risk models, developed during the last thirty years, treat the recovery rate and, more specifically, its relationship with the probability of default of an obligor. Recent empirical evidence concerning this issue is also presented and discussed.
Keywords: credit rating, credit risk, recovery rate, default rate
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
A Risk-Factor Model Foundation for Ratings-Based Bank Capital Rules
-
The Link between Default and Recovery Rates
By Edward I. Altman, Brooks Brady, ...
-
The Link between Default and Recovery Rates: Theory, Empirical Evidence and Implications
By Edward I. Altman, Brooks Brady, ...
-
The Link between Default and Recovery Rates: Theory, Empirical Evidence and Implications
By Edward I. Altman, Brooks Brady, ...
-
The Link between Default and Recovery Rates: Theory, Empirical Evidence and Implications
By Edward I. Altman, Brooks Brady, ...
-
The Link between Default and Recovery Rates: Theory, Empirical Evidence and Implications
By Edward I. Altman, Brooks Brady, ...
-
Understanding Aggregate Default Rates of High Yield Bonds
By Jean Helwege and Paul Kleiman