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The Term Structure of Credit Spreads and the Economic Activity

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File Size : 33,95 MB

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We estimate arbitrage-free term structure models of US Treasury yields and spreads on BBB and B-rated corporate bonds in a doubly- stochastic intensity-based framework. A novel feature of our analysis is the inclusion of macroeconomic variables - indicators of real activity, inflation and financial conditions - as well as latent factors, as drivers of term structure dynamics. Our results point to three key roles played by macro factors in the term structure of spreads: they have a significant impact on the level, and particularly the slope, of the curves; they are largely responsible for variation in the prices of systematic risk; and speculative grade spreads exhibit greater sensitivity to macro shocks than high grade spreads. In addition to estimating risk-neutral default intensities, we provide estimates of physical default intensities using data on Moody's KMV EDFs"!as a forward-looking proxy for default risk. We find that the real and financial activity indicators, along with filtered estimates of the latent factors from our term structure model, explain a large portion of the variation in EDFs"!across time. Furthermore, measures of the price of default event risk implied by estimates of physical and risk-neutral intensities indicate that compensation for default event risk is countercyclical, varies widely across the cycle, and is higher on average and more variable for higher- rated bonds.



Credit Spreads and Real Activity

Author : Philippe Mueller

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Page : 72 pages

File Size : 13,28 MB

Release : 2011

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This paper explores the transmission of credit conditions into the real economy. Specifically, I examine the forecasting power of the term structure of credit spreads for future GDP growth. I find that the whole term structure of credit spreads has predictive power, while the term structure of Treasury yields has none. Using a parsimonious macro-finance term structure model that captures the joint dynamics of GDP, inflation, Treasury yields and credit spreads, I decompose the spreads and identify the drivers of this transmission effect. I show that there is a pure credit component orthogonal to macroeconomic information that accounts for a large part of the forecasting power of credit spreads. The macro factors themselves also contribute to the predictive power, especially for long maturity spreads. Additional factors affecting Treasury yields and credit spreads are irrelevant for predicting future economic activity. The credit factor is highly correlated with the index of tighter loan standards, thus lending support to the existence of a transmission channel from borrowing conditions to the economy. Using data from 2006-2008, I capture the ongoing crisis, during which credit conditions have heavily tightened and I show that the model provides reasonably accurate out-of-sample predictions for this period. As of year-end 2008, the model predicts a contraction of -2% in real GDP growth for 2009, which is lower than comparable survey forecasts.



The Term Structure of Interest Rates and Macro Economy

Author : Evangelos Salachas

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Page : pages

File Size : 32,27 MB

Release : 2015

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In this paper we extract the factors that shape the yield curve and we relate them with macroeconomy. We examine whether the term structure can predict future economic activity by applying a range of econometric approaches both in pre- and post- crisis periods. Furthermore, we assess the strength of the yield curve forecasting power on economic activity for Eurozone. In addition, we analyze the effect of increased market risk in the term structure and economic activity whereas we evaluate the impact of monetary policy in the term structure. We find that the forecasting performance of term structure deteriorates in the post-crisis period and that credit spreads forecast better Eurozone industrial production. Also, as we find, one significant explanation for the change in predictability during pre- and post- crisis periods is due to the effect of market risk on the term structure during the post-crisis period. Finally, we argue that monetary policy determines significantly the term structure either by conventional or unconventional measures.





Macro Factors in the Term Structure of Credit Spreads

Author : Jeffery D. Amato

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Page : 72 pages

File Size : 23,23 MB

Release : 2006

Category : Corporate bonds

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Book Description

We estimate arbitrage-free term structure models of US Treasury yields and spreads on BBB and B rated corporate bonds in a doubly-stochastic intensity-based framework. A novel feature of our analysis is the inclusion of macroeconomic variables -- indicators of real activity, inflation and financial conditions -- as well as latent factors, as drivers of term structure dynamics. Our results point to three key roles played by macro factors in the term structure of spreads: they have a significant impact on the level, and particularly the slope, of the curves; they are largely responsible for variation in the prices of systematic risk; and speculative grade spreads exhibit greater sensitivity to macro shocks than high grade spreads. In addition to estimating risk-neutral default intensities, we provide estimates of physical default intensities using data on Moody's KMV EDFs as a forward--looking proxy for default risk. We find that the real and financial activity indicators, along with filtered estimates of the latent factors from our term structure model, explain a large portion of the variation in EDFs across time. Furthermore, measures of the price of default event risk implied by estimates of physical and risk-neutral intensities indicate that compensation for default event risk is countercyclical, varies widely across the cycle, and is higher on average and more variable for higher-rated bonds.



Stock Market Performance and the Term Structure of Credit Spreads

Author : Andriy Demchuk

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Page : 35 pages

File Size : 31,76 MB

Release : 2004

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We build a structural two-factor model of default where the stock market index is one of the stochastic factors. We allow the firm to adjust its leverage ratio in response to changes the business climate, for which the past performance of the stock market index acts as a proxy. We assume that the firm's log-leverage ratio follows a mean-reverting process and that the past performance of the stock index negatively affects the firm's target leverage ratio. Our model shows that the past performance of the stock index returns and the correlation between the firm's assets and index returns have a significant impact on credit spreads. Hence, our model can explain why credit spreads may be different within the same credit-rating groups and why spreads are lower during economic expansions and higher during recessions. We also show that our model may explain actual yield spreads better than other well known structural credit risk models.



Exploring Common Factors in the Term Structure of Credit Spreads

Author : Seung C. Ahn

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Page : 49 pages

File Size : 16,48 MB

Release : 2012

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This paper provides a new approach to model the common variation in the term structure of credit spreads. The novelty is that common factors are extracted using canonical relations between credit spreads and observable economic variables. We show how these factors can be used to test if a given set of macroeconomic and financial variables is sufficient to capture all the systematic variation in response variables, such as credit spreads. We find that credit spread innovations are subject to three common factors, two strong factors and one weak factor, and they account for 49% of the total variation. The first strong factor is related to the contemporaneous state of the economy, the second represents expectations about future economic conditions, and the weak factor is mainly related to the error correction processes in short-term spreads.



A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Economic Determinants of the Credit Spread Term Structure

Author : Liuren Wu

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Page : 33 pages

File Size : 14,76 MB

Release : 2008

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This paper presents an internally consistent analysis of the economic determinants of the term structure of credit spreads across different credit rating classes and industry sectors. Our analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we extract three economic factors from 13 time series that capture three major dimensions of the economy: inflation pressure, real output growth, and financial market volatility. In the second step, we build a no-arbitrage model that links the dynamics and market prices of these fundamental sources of economic risks to the term structure of Treasury yields and corporate bond credit spreads. Via model estimation, we infer the market pricing of these economic factors and their impacts on the whole term structure of Treasury yields and credit spreads.Estimation shows that positive inflation shocks increase both Treasury yields and credit spreads across all maturities and credit rating classes. Positive shocks on the real output growth also increase the Treasury yields, more so at short maturities than at long maturities. The impacts on the credit spreads are positive for high credit rating classes, but become negative and increasingly so at lower credit rating classes. The financial market volatility factor has small positive impacts on the Treasury yield curve, but the impacts are strongly positive on the credit spreads, and increasingly so at longer maturities and lower credit rating classes.Finally, when we divide each rating class into two industry sectors: financial and corporate, we find that with in each rating class, the credit spreads in the financial sector are on average wider and more volatile than the spreads in the corporate sector. Estimation further shows that the term structure of credit spreads in the financial sector is more responsive to shocks in the economic factors.