Exploring the main factors that determine bond spreads with respect to Treasury rates is one of the most critical issues in the corporate debt market. Credit risk has long been perceived as the most important determinant of bond spreads (Fisher, 1959). One of the most critical parameters in credit risk models is asset volatility, which includes idiosyncratic and systematic components. However, these models do not distinguish between them. Chapter 2 investigates the impact of idiosyncratic volatility on bond portfolio spreads between 2000 and 2010. While the prediction of traditional asset pricing models is that firm-specific risk should be diversified away at aggregate level, I find idiosyncratic volatility plays an incremental role in explaining bond portfolio spreads beyond the market factors. Recovery is an important measurement of credit risk additional to default probability. Chapter 3 focuses on the estimation of firm recovery after bankruptcy using the Leland and Toft (1996) model. Using a large sample of Chapter 11 filings from 1996 to 2007, I find that the recovery derived from the Leland and Toft model has strong explanatory power on the debt recovery observed in the market. Recent literature finds that all extant credit risk models significantly underestimate bond spreads, especially for investment grade bonds of short maturity. Chapter 4 identifies a heretofore ignored component, perceived accounting misstatement, by regressing bond spreads on the proxy of accounting misstatement propensity, while controlling for issuers’ default risk and bond illiquidity risk between January 1994 and June 2002. My thesis deepens the understanding of bond price discovery mechanisms and presents an important challenge for future research to incorporate the strong empirical relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and bond yields in asset pricing models. My thesis also sheds light on the accurate prediction of debt recovery, which is important to the valuation and hedging of risky debt and credit derivatives. Furthermore, my thesis assists in solving the credit spread puzzle by identifying a new risk factor. Overall, my thesis provides new insights into research on the corporate debt market and has important implications for academic scholars and market practitioners. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2013-05-01 07:43:17.718

This thesis consists of three original articles in the field of general equilibrium with incomplete markets and general equilibrium with asymmetric information, and an introduction to the theory, which traces its development and embeds the following chapters in a common framework. In Pareto Improving Trade Restrictions in an Incomplete Markets Economy, we consider a stylised three period one good general equilibrium model with incomplete security markets. We show that the introduction of an indiscriminate marginal constraint on security trades can lead to a Pareto improvement, even though all prices are endogenous and agents are fully rational and have symmetric information. In Signaling Credit Quality Independently of Contract Choice: a Non-Transaction Cost Approach to Swaps in Anonymous Markets, we demonstrate that under two conditions, swaps are non-redundant securities in anonymous financial markets. Firstly, there is asymmetric information over the project payoff which is financed by swaps. And secondly, borrowers are restricted from being investors at the same time. If either of this condition fails, then swaps are redundant assets. Swaps permit a constrained optimal solution to an asymmetric information problem. Finally, Anonymous Corporate Bond Markets with Asymmetric Information, the main article of this thesis, shows that in an anonymous credit market which is characterised by limited liability and asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders, the nominal rate of interest on tradable debt (the coupon rate) sorts borrowers by their riskiness and in this way has an indirect influence on the price and quantity of bonds traded in equilibrium. This is in contrast to symmetric information models, in which the nominal coupon rate has no function. The paper claims that the adverse sorting effect of the nominal interest rate, as in Stiglitz-Weiss (1981), is maintained in a competitive setting, but that, even though changes in the nominal interest rate result in non-monotonic changes in the deliveries of agents, the orderly functioning of markets is not impaired.

Thesis advisor: Pierluigi Balduzzi / Thesis advisor: Jonathan Reuter / In the first essay of this dissertation, I study the impact of fund redemptions and resulting sell-offs on corporate bond yields. To control for unobserved changes in fundamentals, I study within-issuer variation of yield changes, resulting from differential exposure to redemptions and sell-offs. In contrast to previous findings for equity funds, I find no evidence indicating that bond funds destabilize the corporate bond market by moving prices beyond fundamental values. I attribute this finding to bond fund management. Although I find that investors demonstrate a bank-run like behavior, which is a potential source of destabilization, bond fund managers hold a significant level of liquid assets, allowing them to manage redemptions without excessively liquidating corporate bonds. Second essay of this dissertation looks at corporate bond Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which are a new form of financial innovation. Since these investment vehicles are relatively new, little is known about their risks. In this paper, we study an event in the summer 2013, knows as the Taper Tantrum, when bond ETFs and mutual funds experienced massive unexpected outflows due to speculations about interest rate hikes. We find that ETF outflows during the Taper Tantrum lead to a significant increase in exposed corporate bond yields. The increase in yields lasts for seven months, which indicates a temporary fire sale effect. In contrast, we find no fire sale effect resulting from mutual fund outflows. We attribute this contrasting finding between the two vehicles to differences in portfolio construction and investor sensitivities. Finally, we study arbitrage opportunities, created by ETF shares mispricing, and their impact on bond yields. Third essay of this dissertation is about liquidity in the corporate bond market. In market distress, corporate bond investors tend to sell liquid assets and hold onto illiquid ones, a phenomenon which we call flight to illiquidity. We study the impact of flight to illiquidity on corporate bond prices/yields in cross-section as well as corporate bond returns in time-series. First, we show that liquidity price premium disappears in market distress, meaning that liquid bonds are not more expensive than illiquid bonds in distress times. Second, we show that illiquiduity return premium which exists during normal times, not only does not change sign or disappears, but also widens in market distress. In other words, liquid bonds deliver a lower return both on average and during market distress. This pattern is limited to investment grade corporate bonds. Our findings suggest that keeping the credit risk fixed, liquid bonds do not provide safety during the time it is needed the most. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

I examine the effects of contemporaneous credit rating and watchlist announcements on the over-the-counter U.S. corporate bond market. I find significant negative daily abnormal returns (-2.91%) over a ten-day window associated with a downgrade announcement with negative watch. The effect is particularly strong over the two-day post-event window (-1.90%), while there is some weak evidence of market timing during the four days preceding a downgrade (-0.58%). Abnormal returns following upgrades with positive watch are weaker both in terms of statistical significance and magnitude. I also observe higher abnormal bond returns following downgrades with negative watch around rating-sensitive boundaries. These results suggest that bond abnormal returns could also be driven by regulation constraints, besides the information content of the ratings. Finally, a multivariate cross-sectional analysis on abnormal returns over the two-day window following downgrades shows that the negative watchlist state is a key determinant of bond market's response even when key control variables are included. / <p>Lic.-avh. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2014</p>

yes / In this paper, using China’s risk-free and corporate zero yields together with aggregate credit risk measures and various control variables from 2006 to 2013, we document a puzzle of counter-credit-risk corporate yield spreads. We interpret this puzzle as a symptom of the immaturity of China’s credit bond market, which reveals a distorted pricing mechanism latent in the fundamental of this market. We also find interesting results about relationships between corporate yield spreads and interest rates as well as risk premia and the stock index, and these results are somewhat attributed to this puzzle.

This thesis makes two main contributions to the literature. The first is to establish the existence of a capital supply channel, in particular a bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission in the UK using a clean measure of bank loan supply. In this study we exploit the revealed debt preferences of debt issuing firms by using the Becker and Ivashina (2014) fixed effects framework to isolate the impact of credit supply. By conditioning the sample on non-financial firms whose debt issuance is observed, we are able to eliminate the effects of credit demand and to isolate a clean measure for bank loan supply. In this thesis, we find that the tendency by unconstrained, non-financial firms to substitute corporate bonds for bank loans at different points of the financial cycle reflects changes in bank loan supply. We also find that the patterns of substitutability are consistent among more granular classifications of heterogeneous debt. Our results reveal that among unconstrained firms, the proportion of new bank loan issuance declines, while the proportions of corporate bonds and program debt issuance tend to increase, when faced with unfavourable credit market conditions. We then create a loan to bond substitution measure based on observed substitution behaviour of unconstrained firms. We find that this measure explains the out of sample bank loan issuance behaviour of constrained firms. As a result we conclude that the measure is able to cleanly capture changes in bank loan supply. We extend the study to examine the impact of bank loan supply on the financing, hiring and investment decisions of UK non-financial corporations. We find that bank loan supply disruptions significantly and disproportionately affect the hiring and inventory investment decisions of bank dependent firms relative to those of non-bank dependent firms. The propensity to invest or hire among bank dependent UK non-financial firms declines relative to non-bank dependent firms when bank loan supply deteriorates. Moreover, the fixed investment decisions of non-bank dependent firms tend to decline following adverse bank loan supply shocks. These results confirm the existence of a bank lending channel among UK non-financial firms, and the findings are in line with the narrow credit view of monetary policy transmission. Our second central contribution is to analyse the impact of orthogonal QE shocks, credit supply shocks, credit demand shocks, and monetary policy shocks on the aggregate debt issuance behaviour of UK non-financial firms. Using structural vector error correction models (SVECM), we show that QE shocks increase corporate bond issuance and compress term spreads, but have no effect on the policy rate. Moreover, we observe that unexpected increases in the monetary policy rate lead to a decline in corporate bonds in the short term. While credit supply shocks move aggregate bank lending and aggregate corporate bond issuance in the same direction, corporate bond issuance responds with a lag to fluctuation in credit supply. This implies that adverse credit supply shocks may produce amplified negative effects on capital supply as both corporate bonds and bank loan decline. We also establish a counterfactual for corporate bonds and bank loan issues based on our structural model. We find that the QE policies result in the Bank of England averting a decline in corporate bond issuance of between 3% and 10% during the QE period. Our findings in this thesis point towards the existence of a portfolio balance channel of QE that operates in the UK corporate bond markets during the QE period.

<p>Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. </p><p>Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors. </p><p>Result: The most important value of rating is the greater access to the corporate- and CP market. This infers that additional capital can be issued, in comparison to that available from bank loans, however, not necessarily at a lower rate. Consequently, the rate is not the driving factor concerning the choice of buying a rating. Rating has great effect on the pricing of bonds and CP’s, which is a result of the reliance investors have on the rating agencies. Rating affects the investment decision directly through the investment mandates, and indirectly through the effect on the individual investment decision.</p>

Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors. Result: The most important value of rating is the greater access to the corporate- and CP market. This infers that additional capital can be issued, in comparison to that available from bank loans, however, not necessarily at a lower rate. Consequently, the rate is not the driving factor concerning the choice of buying a rating. Rating has great effect on the pricing of bonds and CP’s, which is a result of the reliance investors have on the rating agencies. Rating affects the investment decision directly through the investment mandates, and indirectly through the effect on the individual investment decision.

Cette thèse étudie le financement obligataire des entreprises. Les résultats soulignent le rôle de l’environnement légal et de la gouvernance. Le premier chapitre démontre le rôle de la protection et l’information des créanciers sur le marché obligataire. Il identifie un impact non homogène entre les firmes. Le second chapitre analyse l’impact d’une émission obligataire sur la valeur d’une entreprise à l’aide d’une méta-analyse. Il souligne les facteurs expliquant des résultats jusqu’alors divergents dans la littérature. Le troisième chapitre se focalise sur le marché des émissions obligataires des entreprises chinoises et met en exergue le rôle de la propriété étatique et managérial sur la valeur créée par une émission obligataire. Enfin, le quatrième chapitre isole un biais religieux des investisseurs professionnels, et contribue à la littérature comportementale s’intéressant à la valeur de l’entreprise. / This dissertation studies the corporate bond market. Results emphasize the role of legal environment and governance. The first chapter demonstrates the role of creditors’ protection and information on the corporate bond market. It identifies a non-homogenous impact across firms. The second chapter uses a meta-analysis to scrutinize the effect of a bond offering on the firm’s value. It stresses the reasons underlying diverging results in the literature so far. The third chapter focuses on the Chinese corporate bond market and highlights the role of state and management ownership on the value created by a bond offering. The fourth chapter isolates a religious bias from professional investors and contributes to the literature on the impact of behavioural biases on the firm’s value.

In the study the first part is focused on anylysing the U.S. corporate bond market especially its imporance and progress. Second part is devoted structured products which are integrated in the corporate bond market in USA. Last part is focused on historical yields and especially credit spreads of corporate bonds and the factors which influence them.