Serving the Quantitative Finance Community

 
User avatar
fanhongchopin
Topic Author
Posts: 0
Joined: January 8th, 2014, 4:33 am

Default Probability Conversion

January 14th, 2014, 7:26 am

Hi,Would anyone please shed some lights on how to convert the risk neutral default probability to physical default probability?note : The underlying model does not necessarily have to be Merton model.Thank you,Henry
 
User avatar
Alan
Posts: 3050
Joined: December 19th, 2001, 4:01 am
Location: California
Contact:

Default Probability Conversion

January 14th, 2014, 1:07 pm

I don't know but there have been many forum discussions, for examplehttp://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=8 ... BTABLE=You might want to track down the blog link to "R-probabilities", as this is relevant to your quest.
 
User avatar
Coolman86
Posts: 9
Joined: July 6th, 2010, 5:51 pm

Default Probability Conversion

January 21st, 2014, 10:02 pm

Hi, if you do not consider any particular model, such as KMV which is based on historical experience of mapping Q->P, I don't think this is possible. Every market model will give you a different set of risk-neutral probabilities.If, for example, you bootstrap Q-default probabilities from CDS quotes there is no way how to map them to empirical ones. A long time ago I did some exercise where I tried some kind of Q->P convesion but without any reasonable success. You should also bear in mind that Q-probabilities are usually recovery-rate (RR) dependent (higher RR -> higher Q prob of default) while P-probabilities are, say, RR independent.
Last edited by Coolman86 on January 20th, 2014, 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
User avatar
chilun
Posts: 0
Joined: July 26th, 2011, 11:54 am

Default Probability Conversion

January 22nd, 2014, 1:46 am

Don't think it's possible neither. Take BS model as an example.The risk neutral drift is "r" (interest rate). The physical drift "u" is not even used in the PDE.I believe it's similar case when it comes to default probability model like credit spread.Just my 2 cents.