A Cash Flow Based Multi-Period Corporate Credit Model

Abstract

Among the structural form credit models, this is one of the first few studies that suggest an intrinsic valuation approach that uses the present value of a firm's future cash flows instead of its equity market value to estimate its asset value distribution. We employ an industrial cyclicality linked mean-reverting Gaussian process to model a firm's free cash flows to generate its multi-period unconditional asset value distributions. A firm's unconditional multi-period probability of defaults and expected recovery rates can then be estimated endogenously. The credit information is also useful in pricing corporate bonds.