IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2001-158.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corporate Bond Risk and Real Activity: An Empirical Analysis of Yield Spreads and Their Systematic Components

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Iryna V. Ivaschenko
  • Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau

Abstract

This paper finds that the yield spread of investment-grade bonds relative to Treasuries, a proxy of default risk, predicts marginal changes in industrial production in the United States up to 12 months in the future, even upon controlling for a commonly used predictor such as the commercial paper spread. The paper also finds that systematic risk factors associated with the yield spread of investment-grade bonds to a variety of risk-free benchmarks - Treasuries, agency bonds, and AAA-rated bonds - have significant predictive content for future growth rate of industrial production at 3 to 18 months forecasting horizon, both in- and out-of-sample. Finally, a regime-switching estimation shows that the systematic risk component is also able to capture "industrial production business cycle" well.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Iryna V. Ivaschenko & Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau, 2001. "Corporate Bond Risk and Real Activity: An Empirical Analysis of Yield Spreads and Their Systematic Components," IMF Working Papers 2001/158, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2001/158
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=15386
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engle, Robert F. & Hendry, David F., 1993. "Testing superexogeneity and invariance in regression models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1-2), pages 119-139, March.
    2. Bertocchi, Marida & Giacometti, Rosella & Zenios, Stavros A., 2005. "Risk factor analysis and portfolio immunization in the corporate bond market," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 348-363, March.
    3. Nelson, Charles R & Startz, Richard, 1990. "Some Further Results on the Exact Small Sample Properties of the Instrumental Variable Estimator," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 967-976, July.
    4. Gallant, A. Ronald & Tauchen, George, 1996. "Which Moments to Match?," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 657-681, October.
    5. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    6. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    7. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    8. Knez, Peter J & Litterman, Robert & Scheinkman, Jose Alexandre, 1994. "Explorations into Factors Explaining Money Market Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1861-1882, December.
    9. Michael J. Flemming, 2000. "Financial Market Implications of the Federal Debt Paydown," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 221-252.
    10. Michael J. Fleming, 2001. "Financial market implications of the federal debt paydown," Staff Reports 120, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    11. Gertler, Mark & Lown, Cara S, 1999. "The Information in the High-Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 15(3), pages 132-150, Autumn.
    12. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G., 1993. "Estimation and Inference in Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195060119.
    13. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    14. Albert M. Wojnilower, 1980. "The Central Role of Credit Crunches in Recent Financial History," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 11(2), pages 277-340.
    15. Friedman, Benjamin M & Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1992. "Money, Income, Prices, and Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 472-492, June.
    16. Mr. Garry J. Schinasi & T. Todd Smith & Mr. Charles Frederick Kramer, 2001. "Financial Implications of the Shrinking Supply of U.S. Treasury Securities," IMF Working Papers 2001/061, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhiwei Zhang, 2002. "Corporate Bond Spreads and the Business Cycle," Staff Working Papers 02-15, Bank of Canada.
    2. de Bondt, Gabe, 2002. "Euro area corporate debt securities market: first empirical evidence," Working Paper Series 0164, European Central Bank.
    3. Alfred V Guender & Bernard Tolan, 2013. "The Centre Matters for the Periphery of Europe: The Predictive Ability of a GZ-Type Spread for Economic Activity in Europe," Working Papers in Economics 13/29, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    4. Michael Bleaney & Paul Mizen & Veronica Veleanu, 2012. "Bond Spreads as Predictors of Economic Activity in Eight European Economies," Discussion Papers 12/11, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    5. Gabe de Bondt, 2004. "The balance sheet channel of monetary policy: first empirical evidence for the euro area corporate bond market," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(3), pages 219-228.
    6. Mr. Iryna V. Ivaschenko, 2003. "How Much Leverage is too Much, or Does Corporate Risk Determine the Severity of a Recession?," IMF Working Papers 2003/003, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Gross, Marco, 2011. "Corporate bond spreads and real activity in the euro area - Least Angle Regression forecasting and the probability of the recession," Working Paper Series 1286, European Central Bank.
    8. Brown, Alessio J. G. & Žarnić, Žiga, 2003. "Explaining the increased German credit spread: The role of supply factors," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 412, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Saar, Dan & Yagil, Yossi, 2015. "Forecasting growth and stock performance using government and corporate yield curves: Evidence from the European and Asian markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 27-41.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlson Mark A & King Thomas & Lewis Kurt, 2011. "Distress in the Financial Sector and Economic Activity," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-31, June.
    2. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajšek, 2011. "Monetary Policy and Credit Supply Shocks," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(2), pages 195-232, June.
    3. Gilchrist, Simon & Yankov, Vladimir & Zakrajsek, Egon, 2009. "Credit market shocks and economic fluctuations: Evidence from corporate bond and stock markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 471-493, May.
    4. Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau & Mr. Iryna V. Ivaschenko, 2002. "The Corporate Spread Curve and Industrial Production in the United States," IMF Working Papers 2002/008, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Nektarios Aslanidis & Andrea Cipollini, 2007. "Leading indicator properties of the US corporate spreads," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 115, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    6. Brown, Alessio J. G. & Žarnić, Žiga, 2003. "Explaining the increased German credit spread: The role of supply factors," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 412, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    7. Manuela Goretti, 2005. "The Brazilian currency turmoil of 2002: a nonlinear analysis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 289-306.
    8. Theobald, Thomas, 2013. "Markov Switching with Endogenous Number of Regimes and Leading Indicators in a Real-Time Business Cycle Forecast," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79911, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. repec:wsr:wpaper:y:2010:i:057 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika & Wei, Min, 2006. "What does the yield curve tell us about GDP growth?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 359-403.
    11. Simon Gilchrist & Benoit Mojon, 2018. "Credit Risk in the Euro Area," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 118-158, February.
    12. Singh, Tarlok, 2014. "On the regime-switching and asymmetric dynamics of economic growth in the OECD countries," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 169-192.
    13. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    14. Saar, Dan & Yagil, Yossi, 2015. "Forecasting growth and stock performance using government and corporate yield curves: Evidence from the European and Asian markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 27-41.
    15. Muellbauer, John & Nunziata, Luca, 2001. "Credit, the Stock Market and Oil: Forecasting US GDP," CEPR Discussion Papers 2906, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Benchimol, Jonathan & Qureshi, Irfan, 2020. "Time-varying money demand and real balance effects," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 197-211.
    17. Kalimipalli, Madhu & Nayak, Subhankar & Perez, M. Fabricio, 2013. "Dynamic effects of idiosyncratic volatility and liquidity on corporate bond spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2969-2990.
    18. Naifar, Nader, 2011. "What explains default risk premium during the financial crisis? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 412-430, September.
    19. Glover, Brent, 2016. "The expected cost of default," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 284-299.
    20. (Kim | Lopez-Salido | Swanson) & Andrew Levin, 2004. "The magnitude and Cyclical Behavior of Financial Market Frictions," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 224, Society for Computational Economics.
    21. Jae Sim & Egon Zakrajsek & Simon Gilchrist, 2010. "Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics," 2010 Meeting Papers 1285, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2001/158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.