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The purpose of this paper is to present a review of selected applications of contingent claims analysis in corporate finance. Contingent claims analysis is an approach to valuing payoffs which are contingent on other uncertain payoffs. The essential logic of the different applications reviewed is that we can value these derivative payoffs by replicating them with assets, whose prices are known. This simple logic is capable of providing one with insights into the pricing of new types of financial assets (e.g. optional bonds) as well as providing new insights into the valuation of strategic corporate investments.

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to evaluate the implicit government guarantee to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to their placement into conservatorship. The main findings of the paper indicate that the expected value of the guarantee was in line with the size of capital injections under the Treasury Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement and that the market expected the government to cover nearly all expected losses on senior debt. However, simulations reveal that the eventual total cost to recapitalize the GSEs may be significantly higher than provided for under the original terms of the conservatorship.

Several researchers have found that the value of stock declines at the announcement of a debt for equity swap. This decline is attributed to an information effect: the firm’s financial condition is worse than the market expected. Our research develops an alternative explanation. Using the theory that equity can be valued as an option on the firm, it is shown that, depending on the exchange ratio, a debt for equity swap will cause the price of the stock to decline. This theory is tested using a sample of firms that announced debt for common equity swaps. The theoretically predicted stock price reactions are consistent with the actually observed stock price reactions. Furthermore, the contingent claims model has better explanatory power than a simple model of dilution. Tests on the sensitivity to the assumptions of the option pricing model show that only the assumption of the time to expiration of the option significantly affects the results.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the implications of exchange rate fluctuations on China's national macro‐financial stability and evaluate current renminbi (RMB) appreciation speed and magnitude.

The contingent claims analysis method is used to construct the financial risk indicator and evaluate the macro‐financial risk. The paper also implemented computer simulations to generate different scenarios in the macro‐scenario analysis.

The main conclusion is that there is claims‐based currency mismatch in China's four major economic sectors. The simulation results show that faster appreciation leads to wide fluctuations on asset prices, the size of the base currency and foreign debt in China. In the current risk level, steady speed appreciation style is better than the accelerated appreciation style.

The results of this paper imply that current appreciation speed and magnitude are favorable to control macro‐financial risks within safe status, but China needs to promote the reform of RMB exchange rate formation mechanism in the future.

The paper is of historical value in applying the contingent claims analysis method to analyse the implications of exchange rate fluctuations. It provides a new way to measure whether the exchange rate is reasonable.

In this second installment, the author addresses some of the problems associated with empirically validating contingent‐claim models for valuing risky debt. The article uses a simple contingent claims risky debt valuation model to fit term structures of credit spreads derived from data for U.S. corporate bonds. An essential component to fitting this model is the use of expected default frequency; the estimate of the firms' expected default probability over a specific time horizon. The author discusses the statistical and econometric procedures used in fitting the term structure of credit spreads and estimating model parameters. These include iteratively reweighted non‐linear least squares are used to dampen the impact of outliers and ensure convergence in each cross‐sectional estimation from 1992 to 1999.

This article surveys available research on the contingent‐claims approach to risky debt valuation. The author describes both the structural and reduced form versions of contingent claims models and summarizes both the theoretical and empirical research in this area. Relative to the progress made in the theory of risky debt valuation, empirical validation of these models lags far behind. This survey highlights the increasing gap between the theoretical valuation and the empirical understanding of risky debt.

Industry interest in equity‐based contingent claims models for evaluating credit risky securities has recently surged. These methods assume away valuation uncertainty that exists in practice. This article explores the impact of valuation uncertainty on these contingent claims models, by analyzing how varying levels of model uncertainty bias default probability estimates obtained from standard contingent claims models.

Under the trend of global economic integration and the new context of stagflation, frequent fluctuations in international interest rates are exerting far-reaching impacts on the world economy. In this paper, the transmission mechanism of the impact of fluctuations in international interest rates (specifically, the American interest rate) on the bankruptcy risk in China's pillar industry, the construction industry (which is also sensitive to interest rates), is examined.

Using an improved contingent claims analysis, the bankruptcy risk of enterprises is calculated in this paper. Additionally, an individual fixed-effects model is developed to investigate the mediating effects of international interest rates on the bankruptcy risk in the Chinese construction industry. The heterogeneity of subindustries in the industrial chain and the impact of China's energy consumption structure are also analysed in this paper.

The findings show that fluctuations in international interest rates, which affect the bankruptcy risk of China's construction industry, are mainly transmitted through two major pathways, namely, commodity price effects and exchange rate effects. In addition, the authors examine the important impact of China's energy consumption structure on risk transmission and assess the transmission and sharing of risks within the industrial chain.

First, in the research field, the study of international interest rate risk is extended to domestic-oriented industries. Second, in terms of the research content, this paper is focused on China-specific issues, including the significant influence of China's energy consumption structure characteristics and the risk contagion (and risk sharing) as determined by the current development of the Chinese construction industry. Third, in terms of research methods a modified contingent claim analysis approach to bankruptcy risk indicators is adopted for this study, thus overcoming the problems of data frequency, market sentiment and financial data fraud, which are issues that are ignored by most relevant studies.

This article presents a model for the fair valuation of a large class of insurance and pension liabilities. Life insurance companies and pension funds often issue policies/contracts with embedded options such as minimum return guarantees and bonus and surrender options. Until recently, most companies have neglected the proper valuation and risk management of these contingent claims. Recent recommendations from FASB and IASC have forced companies to revise their policies; the common theme in the recommended new accounting standards is the application of market or fair valuation principles throughout the balance sheet. In order to implement mark‐to‐market accounting, financial models are needed. The author presents a model of this type, discusses its implementation, and illustrates its potential usefulness with numerical examples. He concludes that minimum return guarantees can become very valuable, insolvency risk can be significant in realistic scenarios, and effective regulatory intervention rules can be of significant value to policyholders.

The paper examines contingent liabilities' effect on the firm's dividend decisions.

Fixed-effects regression and logit model results estimate the influence of contingent liabilities on firms' dividend decisions using a sample of 2,288 firm-year observations of S&P 500 firms from 2012 until 2022. Robustness checks and results from the 2SLS model further support the authors’ findings.

The results show that contingent liabilities negatively affect dividend payment decisions. This analysis further demonstrates that the stated effect of contingent liabilities on dividend decisions is more substantial for firms with financing deficits and those with above-industry-average corporate governance scores.

There needs to be more systematic conceptual reason for measuring uncertainty for firms and its influence on dividend decisions. Future research should use other measures of firm uncertainty to examine the relation of the firm's uncertainty with dividend decisions.

The authors suggest that contingent liabilities create uncertainty for future cash flows, influence a firm's agency costs and provide credible signals on a firm's prospects to the market. The findings support existing literature that measurable firm-specific variables significantly influence a firm's dividend decisions. The results are robust for an alternative explanation.

By investigating the impact of the influence of contingent liabilities on dividends, the authors extend research on dividend decisions and attempt to provide insights into a firm's dividend decisions by incorporating an off-the-balance sheet item (contingent liabilities) as a significant predictor for dividend decisions.