IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25995.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is There a Risk-Return Tradeoff in the Corporate Bond Market? Time-Series and Cross-Sectional Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Jennie Bai
  • Turan G. Bali
  • Quan Wen

Abstract

We provide time-series and cross-sectional evidence on the significance of a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market. We find a significantly positive intertemporal relation between expected return and risk in the bond market and the time-series predictability is driven by aggregate systematic risk instead of aggregate idiosyncratic risk. We also propose a new measure of systematic risk for corporate bonds and find a positive link between systematic risk and the cross-section of future bond returns. We provide an explanation for the significance of systematic (idiosyncratic) risk based on different investor preferences and informational frictions in the bond (equity) market.

Suggested Citation

  • Jennie Bai & Turan G. Bali & Quan Wen, 2019. "Is There a Risk-Return Tradeoff in the Corporate Bond Market? Time-Series and Cross-Sectional Evidence," NBER Working Papers 25995, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25995
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25995.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    2. Daniel Dorn & Gur Huberman, 2005. "Talk and Action: What Individual Investors Say and What They Do," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 437-481, December.
    3. Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The specification of conditional expectations," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(5), pages 573-637, December.
    4. Campbell, John Y. & Hentschel, Ludger, 1992. "No news is good news *1: An asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 281-318, June.
    5. Hui Guo & Robert F. Whitelaw, 2006. "Uncovering the Risk–Return Relation in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1433-1463, June.
    6. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret & Whitelaw, Robert F., 2011. "Maxing out: Stocks as lotteries and the cross-section of expected returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 427-446, February.
    7. William N. Goetzmann & Alok Kumar, 2008. "Equity Portfolio Diversification," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 12(3), pages 433-463.
    8. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret, 2008. "Idiosyncratic Volatility and the Cross Section of Expected Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(1), pages 29-58, March.
    9. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    10. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    11. Stephen A. Ross, 2013. "The Arbitrage Theory of Capital Asset Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 1, pages 11-30, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Glosten, Lawrence R & Jagannathan, Ravi & Runkle, David E, 1993. "On the Relation between the Expected Value and the Volatility of the Nominal Excess Return on Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1779-1801, December.
    13. Merton, Robert C, 1987. "A Simple Model of Capital Market Equilibrium with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 483-510, July.
    14. Jack Bao & Jun Pan & Jiang Wang, 2011. "The Illiquidity of Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 911-946, June.
    15. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2005. "There is a risk-return trade-off after all," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 509-548, June.
    16. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    17. Bollerslev, Tim & Engle, Robert F & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1988. "A Capital Asset Pricing Model with Time-Varying Covariances," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 116-131, February.
    18. Wei Huang & Qianqiu Liu & S. Ghon Rhee & Liang Zhang, 2010. "Return Reversals, Idiosyncratic Risk, and Expected Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(1), pages 147-168, January.
    19. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2015. "Editor's Choice Digesting Anomalies: An Investment Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(3), pages 650-705.
    20. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    21. Andrew Ang & Robert J. Hodrick & Yuhang Xing & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2006. "The Cross‐Section of Volatility and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 259-299, February.
    22. Elton, Edwin J & Gruber, Martin J & Blake, Christopher R, 1995. "Fundamental Economic Variables, Expected Returns, and Bond Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1229-1256, September.
    23. 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.
    24. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    25. Alok Kumar, 2009. "Who Gambles in the Stock Market?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1889-1933, August.
    26. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    27. Hou, Kewei & Loh, Roger K., 2016. "Have we solved the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 167-194.
    28. Fu, Fangjian, 2009. "Idiosyncratic risk and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 24-37, January.
    29. Maio, Paulo & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2012. "Multifactor models and their consistency with the ICAPM," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 586-613.
    30. Daniel, Kent & Titman, Sheridan, 1997. "Evidence on the Characteristics of Cross Sectional Variation in Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 1-33, March.
    31. Bali, Turan G. & Engle, Robert F., 2010. "The intertemporal capital asset pricing model with dynamic conditional correlations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 377-390, May.
    32. Brandt, Michael W. & Kang, Qiang, 2004. "On the relationship between the conditional mean and volatility of stock returns: A latent VAR approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 217-257, May.
    33. Nelson, Daniel B, 1991. "Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Asset Returns: A New Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 347-370, March.
    34. Han, Bing & Kumar, Alok, 2013. "Speculative Retail Trading and Asset Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 377-404, April.
    35. Paul Harrison & Harold H. Zhang, 1999. "An Investigation Of The Risk And Return Relation At Long Horizons," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(3), pages 399-408, August.
    36. Whitelaw, Robert F, 1994. "Time Variations and Covariations in the Expectation and Volatility of Stock Market Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 515-541, June.
    37. Dorn, Daniel & Huberman, Gur, 2010. "Preferred risk habitat of individual investors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 155-173, July.
    38. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    39. French, Kenneth R. & Schwert, G. William & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1987. "Expected stock returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, September.
    40. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2019. "Common risk factors in the cross-section of corporate bond returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 619-642.
    41. Hendrik Bessembinder & Kathleen M. Kahle & William F. Maxwell & Danielle Xu, 2009. "Measuring Abnormal Bond Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(10), pages 4219-4258, October.
    42. Blume, Marshall E & Friend, Irwin, 1975. "The Asset Structure of Individual Portfolios and Some Implications for Utility Functions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 30(2), pages 585-603, May.
    43. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    44. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Murray, Scott & Tang, Yi, 2017. "A Lottery-Demand-Based Explanation of the Beta Anomaly," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(6), pages 2369-2397, December.
    45. Bollerslev, Tim & Zhou, Hao, 2006. "Volatility puzzles: a simple framework for gauging return-volatility regressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 123-150.
    46. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    47. Chung, Kee H. & Wang, Junbo & Wu, Chunchi, 2019. "Volatility and the cross-section of corporate bond returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 397-417.
    48. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    49. Zhanhui Chen & Ralitsa Petkova, 2012. "Does Idiosyncratic Volatility Proxy for Risk Exposure?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(9), pages 2745-2787.
    50. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    51. Bali, Turan G., 2008. "The intertemporal relation between expected returns and risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 101-131, January.
    52. Terrance Odean, 1999. "Do Investors Trade Too Much?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1279-1298, December.
    53. Yufeng Han & David Lesmond, 2011. "Liquidity Biases and the Pricing of Cross-sectional Idiosyncratic Volatility," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(5), pages 1590-1629.
    54. Brennan, Michael J. & Chordia, Tarun & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1998. "Alternative factor specifications, security characteristics, and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 345-373, September.
    55. Valery Polkovnichenko, 2005. "Household Portfolio Diversification: A Case for Rank-Dependent Preferences," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1467-1502.
    56. Levy, Haim, 1978. "Equilibrium in an Imperfect Market: A Constraint on the Number of Securities in the Portfolio," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(4), pages 643-658, September.
    57. Lin, Hai & Wang, Junbo & Wu, Chunchi, 2011. "Liquidity risk and expected corporate bond returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 628-650, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2021. "Is there a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market? Time-series and cross-sectional evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1017-1037.
    2. Guo, Hui & Qiu, Buhui, 2014. "Options-implied variance and future stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 93-113.
    3. Zhong, Angel, 2018. "Idiosyncratic volatility in the Australian equity market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 105-125.
    4. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, February.
    5. Bali, Turan G. & Engle, Robert F., 2010. "The intertemporal capital asset pricing model with dynamic conditional correlations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 377-390, May.
    6. Keunbae Ahn, 2021. "Predictable Fluctuations in the Cross-Section and Time-Series of Asset Prices," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2021, January-A.
    7. Amit Goyal, 2012. "Empirical cross-sectional asset pricing: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 3-38, March.
    8. Bali, Turan G. & Gunaydin, A. Doruk & Jansson, Thomas & Karabulut, Yigitcan, 2023. "Do the rich gamble in the stock market? Low risk anomalies and wealthy households," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2).
    9. Maio, Paulo & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2012. "Multifactor models and their consistency with the ICAPM," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 586-613.
    10. Turan Bali & Kamil Yilmaz, 2009. "The Intertemporal Relation between Expected Return and Risk on Currency," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 0909, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum, revised Nov 2009.
    11. Chung, Kee H. & Wang, Junbo & Wu, Chunchi, 2019. "Volatility and the cross-section of corporate bond returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 397-417.
    12. Chiang, Thomas C. & Li, Huimin & Zheng, Dazhi, 2015. "The intertemporal risk-return relationship: Evidence from international markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 156-180.
    13. Ji Cao & Marc Oliver Rieger & Lei Zhao, 2019. "Safety First, Loss Probability, and the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns," Working Paper Series 2019-02, University of Trier, Research Group Quantitative Finance and Risk Analysis.
    14. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    15. Poon, Percy & Yao, Tong & Zhang, Andrew (Jianzhong), 2022. "The alphas of beta and idiosyncratic volatility," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    16. Wang, Zijun, 2021. "The high volume return premium and economic fundamentals," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 325-345.
    17. Sakemoto, Ryuta, 2023. "The long-run risk premium in the intertemporal CAPM: International evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    18. Tobias Adrian & Joshua Rosenberg, 2008. "Stock Returns and Volatility: Pricing the Short‐Run and Long‐Run Components of Market Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2997-3030, December.
    19. Yong-Ho Cheon & Kuan-Hui Lee, 2018. "Maxing Out Globally: Individualism, Investor Attention, and the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5807-5831, December.
    20. Bali, Turan G. & Cakici, Nusret & Chabi-Yo, Fousseni, 2015. "A new approach to measuring riskiness in the equity market: Implications for the risk premium," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 101-117.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:25995. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.