Chester S. Spatt, Effects of Capital Gains Taxation on Life-Cycle Investment and Portfolio Management: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 42, No. 3, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Finance Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, December 28-30, 1986 (Jul., 1987), pp. 758-761

The development of organized markets for speculative-grade corporate debt has provided financial researchers with an opportunity to examine the pricing of default risk. By incorporating previous work on the default experience of low-rated corporate debt, this paper presents an introduction to risk-neutral models of risky-bond pricing and uses these to examine the relationship between the default premium embodied in bond yields and actual default rates. The contribution of macroeconomic information to the default premium is also examined. The author finds that holders of low-grade bonds have, on average, been compensated for losses due to default.

The development of organized markets for speculative‐grade corporate debt has provided financial researchers with an opportunity to examine the pricing of default risk. By incorporating previous work on the default experience of low‐rated corporate debt, this paper presents an introduction to risk‐neutral models of risky‐bond pricing and uses these to examine the relationship between the default premium embodied in bond yields and actual default rates. The contribution of macroeconomic information to the default premium is also examined. The author finds that holders of low‐grade bonds have, on average, been compensated for losses due to default.

In this paper, we develop a model for valuing debt options that takes into account the changing characteristics of the underlying bond by assuming that the standard deviation of return is proportional to the bond's duration. The resulting model uses the bond price as the single state variable and thus preserves much of the simplicity and robustness of the Black‐Scholes approach. The paper provides comparisons between option prices computed using this model and those using the Black‐Scholes and Brennan and Schwartz models.