In my prior works (Altman 1992, 1996) on the distressed and defaulted debt market, estimates of the size of the market were as high as $300 billion (face value) and $200 billion (market value) at the start of 1990. Since that date, the size of the market has diminished consistently. This data is shown in Exhibit 1 and includes public and private debt estimates. The private debt total was estimated by applying a multiplier of as high as three times the public debt in 1990 and as low as in 1992. Both of these estimates are based on empirical observations of a.
