A Simple Method for Extracting the Probability of Default from American Put Option Prices

Abstract: We present a novel method for extracting the risk‐neutral probability of default (PD) of a firm from American put option prices. Building on the idea of a default corridor proposed by Carr and Wu, we derive a parsimonious closed‐form formula for American put option prices from which the PD can be inferred. The method is easy to implement. Our empirical results based on seven large US firms for the period 2002–2010 show that, in some cases, our option‐implied PD can provide a more accurate estimate of default probability than the estimates implied from credit default swaps.