Merton's Default Risk Model for Private Company

Abstract: Because the asset value of a private company does not observable except in quarterly reports, the structural model has not been developed for a private company. For this reason, this paper attempt to develop the Merton's structural model for the private company by using the dividend discount model (DDM). In this paper, we obtain closed--form formulas of risk--neutral equity and liability values and default probability for the private company. Also, the paper provides ML estimators and the EM algorithm of our model's parameters.