Modeling loan commitments

Loan commitments represent more than 82 percent of all commercial and industrial loans by domestic banks. This paper develops a valuation model for loan commitments incorporating early exercise, multiple fees, partial exercise and credit risk. The model is analytically tractable and easy to implement. Using a sample of commercial paper backup credit lines from the Dealscan database, we show that our model prices closely match loan commitment market prices. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.