Abstract
The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 has led to a sharp increase in the number of unsold homes in our country. This has not only caused huge national and social expenditures, but has also made it challenging to manage construction companies given the slow progress of new projects and rise in debt and financial expenses. The default risk of construction companies results in economic losses to the interested parties as well as a huge burden on national finances, since it is linked to the default risk of financial institutions. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the Expected Default Frequency and the unsold housing stock using the KMV(Kealhofer, McQuown and Vasicek) model, based on the assumption that there is a close relationship between unsold housing stacks and default risk of construction companies. This study has utilized the KMV model based on the option pricing theory for deriving the Expected Default Frequency of an individual construction company. The Vector Error Correction Model was used for analyzing the relationship with unsold housing stock. For calculating the Expected Default Frequency, 26 listed construction companies from 2001-2010 were selected. The results are as follows. 1) It was found that the default risk of construction companies is primarily affected by the unsold housing stock that piled up due to the housing market situation. 2) The impulse response analysis confirmed that the default risk of construction companies is primarily affected by the creation of unsold housing stock, rather than due to housing price shocks.
