Recently, much academic and regulatory interest has been concentrated on the problem of high-yield, junk bond default. Arguably, corporate bonds have defaulted for many reasons, including factors specific to the individual issuing firm, variables corresponding to the industry in which it operates, and macroeconomic forces affecting the business cycle. Individual factors include the firm's leverage, industry type, agency problem, riskiness of the investment decisions, managerial integrity, efficiency and investment savvy together with institutional operating costs. Industry and aggregate factors affect the firm's performance and therefore affect default as well. This paper tests the significance of the firm's characteristics on the likelihood of default and assesses their.
