We report a significant positive association between the likelihood of securities fraud allegations and a measure of executive stock option incentives. This relation is robust to the inclusion of other components of the compensation structure and to other possible determinants of fraud allegations. In addition, we find that the positive relation between the likelihood of fraud allegations and option intensity is stronger in firms with higher outside blockholder and higher institutional ownership. These findings support the view that stock options increase the incentive to engage in fraudulent activity and that this incentive is exacerbated by institutional and block ownership.

We theorize and confirm a new channel by means of which liquidity costs are embedded in CDS spreads. We show that credit default swap (CDS) spreads are directly related to equity market liquidity in the Merton [Merton, R.C., 1974. On the pricing of corporate debt: The risk structure of interest rates. J. Finance 29, 449–470] model via hedging. We confirm this relationship empirically using a sample of 1452 quarterly CDS spreads over 2001–2005. In the model, this relationship is monotone increasing when credit quality worsens. These results are robust to alternative measures of equity liquidity and other possible determinants of CDS spreads.

Using a large sample of U.S. mortgages observed over the 2005–2009 period, we document contagion effects in strategic mortgage defaults. Strategic defaults result from borrowers choosing to exercise their in the money default option and our findings suggest this choice is influenced by the delinquency rate in surrounding zip codes (within a 5 mile radius), after controlling for other known determinants of mortgage default. These controls include a large array of borrower and loan characteristics, local demographic and economic conditions, spatial correlations, and changes in property values. Our findings that the local area delinquency rate is an important factor for strategic defaulters (borrowers that can be influenced in their decision) but not for defaults that are the result of inability to pay (borrowers that had no choice) lend support the contagion hypothesis. Our estimates suggest that a 1% increase in the local area delinquency rate may increase the probability of a strategic default by 7.25–16.5%.

Models of financial distress rely primarily on accounting-based information (e.g. [Altman, E., 1968. Financial ratios, discriminant analysis and the prediction of corporate bankruptcy. Journal of Finance 23, 589–609; Ohlson, J., 1980. Financial ratios and the probabilistic prediction of bankruptcy. Journal of Accounting Research 19, 109–131]) or market-based information (e.g. [Merton, R.C., 1974. On the pricing of corporate debt: The risk structure of interest rates. Journal of Finance 29, 449–470]). In this paper, we provide evidence on the relative performance of these two classes of models. Using a sample of 2860 quarterly CDS spreads we find that a model of distress using accounting metrics performs comparably to market-based structural models of default. Moreover, a model using both sources of information performs better than either of the two models. Overall, our results suggest that both sources of information (accounting- and market-based) are complementary in pricing distress.