Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 9, 2026

An R-Based Landscape Validation of a Competing Risk Model
Published on: September 16, 2022
Curve fitting of the corporate recovery rates: the comparison of Beta distribution estimation and kernel density
1School of Finance, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, China. rongdachen@163.com
Abstract:
Recovery rate is essential to the estimation of the portfolio's loss and economic capital. Neglecting the randomness of the distribution of recovery rate may underestimate the risk. The study introduces two kinds of models of distribution, Beta distribution estimation and kernel density distribution estimation, to simulate the distribution of recovery rates of corporate loans and bonds. As is known, models based on Beta distribution are common in daily usage, such as CreditMetrics by J.P. Morgan, Portfolio Manager by KMV and Losscalc by Moody's. However, it has a fatal defect that it can't fit the bimodal or multimodal distributions such as recovery rates of corporate loans and bonds as Moody's new data show. In order to overcome this flaw, the kernel density estimation is introduced and we compare the simulation results by histogram, Beta distribution estimation and kernel density estimation to reach the conclusion that the Gaussian kernel density distribution really better imitates the distribution of the bimodal or multimodal data samples of corporate loans and bonds. Finally, a Chi-square test of the Gaussian kernel density estimation proves that it can fit the curve of recovery rates of loans and bonds. So using the kernel density distribution to precisely delineate the bimodal recovery rates of bonds is optimal in credit risk management.
Related Concept Videos
Parametric Survival Analysis: Weibull and Exponential Methods
Weibull Distribution
The Weibull distribution is a flexible model used in parametric survival analysis. It can handle both increasing and decreasing hazard rates, depending on its shape parameter...
Survival Curves
The Kaplan-Meier estimator is the most common method for constructing survival curves. This...
Kaplan-Meier Approach
Expected Frequencies in Goodness-of-Fit Tests
Microsoft Excel: Finding Central Tendency, Skew, and Kurtosis
Mean: The arithmetic average of all data points. It is calculated by adding all the values together and dividing by the number of values. The mean is sensitive to extreme values (outliers).
Median: The middle value when the data points are arranged in ascending or descending...
Distributions to Estimate Population Parameter

