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This dissertation includes three essays, which investigate contingent claims pricing subject to credit risk based on the structural approach and analyze associated issues of corporate finance. The first essay develops and examines a partial equilibrium model to investigate the effects of macroeconomic condition and firm-level productivity shocks on the determination of optimal debt ratio. The model extends the contingent-claims models of the firm's capital structure by incorporating both the industry demand and firm-level supply factors into the firm's earnings and unlevered asset value. Our model predicts that the optimal debt ratio is negatively correlated to the macroeconomic conditions and the firm-level productivity. Furthermore, the theoretical implications are totally supported by the pooled feasible generalized least squares estimation with 311 Taiwanese listed manufacturing firms' quarterly data over the period from 1994 to 2003. The differences between the high-tech electronics and other manufacturing firms are also investigated, and particularly the high-tech firms are not tied up with the macroeconomic conditions while the others are. The second essay presents a contingent claim valuation of a callable convertible bond with the issuer's credit risk. The optimal call, voluntary conversion and bankruptcy strategies are jointly determined by shareholders and bondholders to maximize the equity value and the bond value, respectively. Our model not only incorporates tax benefits, bankruptcy costs, refunding costs and a call notice period, but also takes account of the issuer's debt size and structure. The numerical results show that the predicted optimal call policies are generally consistent with recent empirical findings; therefore calling convertible bonds too late or too early can be rational. The third essay provides a closed-form valuation formula for the Black-Scholes options subject to interest rate risk and credit risk. Not only does our model allow f.
This dissertation consists of three research topics in contemporary financial option pricing theories and their applications. The common theme of those topics involves the pricing of financial claims whose value become path-dependent when using the usual lattice approximating schemes.The first essay explores the potential of transformation and other schemes in constructing a sequence of simple binomial processes that weakly converges to the desired diffusion limit. Convergence results are established for the valuation of both European and American contingent claims when the underlying asset prices are approximated by simple binomial processes. It is also demonstrated how to construct reflecting or absorbing binomial processes to approximate diffusions with boundaries. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed simple approximations not only converge, but also give more accurate results then existing methods such as Nelson and Ramaswamy (1990), especially for longer maturities.Our purpose in essay 2 is two-fold. First we extend some of the simple lattice-approximation methods for one-dimensional diffusions to higher dimensions and develop special lattices to approximate perfectly correlated diffusions. We then examine current modelling issues of the term structure of interest rates, and demonstrate how to apply the approximation techniques developed here to handle path-dependence and multi-sources of uncertainty in these models.The last essay analyzes the investment decisions of insured banks under fixed-rate deposit insurance. The model takes into account the charter value and allows banks to dynamically revise their asset portfolios. Trade-offs exists between preserving the charter and exploiting deposit insurance. The optimal bank portfolio problem is solved analytically for a constant charter value. In any audit period, banks maximize their risk exposure before some critical time and act cautiously thereafter. The corresponding deposit insurance is shown to be a put option that matures at this critical time rather than at the audit date.
This is a multi-essay dissertation designed to explore the contingent claim pricing theory with non-tradable underlying assets, with emphasis on its applications to insurance and risk management. In the first essay, I apply the real option pricing theory and dynamic programming methods to address problems in the area of operational risk management. Particularly, I develop a two-stage model to help firms determine optimal switching triggers in the event of an influenza epidemic. In the second essay, I examine mortality securitization in an incomplete market framework. I build a jump-diffusion process into the original Lee-Carter model and explore alternative model with transitory versus permanent jump effects. I discuss pricing difficulties of the Swiss Re mortality bond (2003) and use the Wang transform to account for correlations of the mortality index over time. In the third essay, I study the valuation of the non-recourse provision in reverse mortgages. I model the various risks embedded in the HECM program and apply the conditional Esscher transform to price the non-recourse provision. I further examine the premium structure of HECM loans and investigate whether insurance premiums are adequate to cover expected claims.