Credit Ranking of Firms Using Option Pricing Adjusted with Duration

Investors use credit ranking to help them to price the risks associated with fixed income securities. In literature, many studies have used option pricing for assessing and analyzing the credit risk, and they have ranked firms according to the assets volatility, distance to default and probability of default. In this paper, in addition to estimating assets volatility without solving BSM’s simultaneous equations, we use adjusted-time to maturity of debts or duration of debts. Our sample includes 5670 firms from US market during 2001 to 2013. After ranking firms and plotting ROC curves of our approach, BSM approach and BhSh approach, we conclude that our new approach has a relative high accuracy. Furthermore, this research provides a risk-based framework to analyze the effects of option variables and other market variables.