IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joecas/v14y2016ipap39-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Treasury yields and credit spread dynamics: A regime-switching approach

Author

Listed:
  • Georgoutsos, Dimitris
  • Kounitis, Thomas

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the conflicting empirical evidence on the relationship between credit spreads and Treasury rates. Following a general-to-specific modeling approach, we were unable to accept the presence of a long-run relationship between Baa credit spreads and long-term Treasury rates. At the same time, and in support of the structural models on credit risk modeling, a negative short-run relationship was obtained by means of impulse response functions. Subsequently, by employing a regime-switching estimation technique, we were able to establish the importance of the Treasury yield curve slope for the Baa credit spread determination in periods characterized by low interest rate volatility. Finally, we were able to provide evidence of an asymmetric response of the Baa credit spread to term spread changes according to the source of these changes, i.e. short or long term Treasury rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Georgoutsos, Dimitris & Kounitis, Thomas, 2016. "Treasury yields and credit spread dynamics: A regime-switching approach," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 14(PA), pages 39-51.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joecas:v:14:y:2016:i:pa:p:39-51
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeca.2016.07.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1703494916300275
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jeca.2016.07.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francis A. Longstaff & Sanjay Mithal & Eric Neis, 2005. "Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk or Liquidity? New Evidence from the Credit Default Swap Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(5), pages 2213-2253, October.
    2. Ehrmann, Michael & Ellison, Martin & Valla, Natacha, 2003. "Regime-dependent impulse response functions in a Markov-switching vector autoregression model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 295-299, March.
    3. Ericsson, Jan & Jacobs, Kris & Oviedo, Rodolfo, 2009. "The Determinants of Credit Default Swap Premia," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 109-132, February.
    4. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1999. "Modeling Term Structures of Defaultable Bonds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 687-720.
    5. Saikkonen, Pentti & Luukkonen, Ritva, 1997. "Testing cointegration in infinite order vector autoregressive processes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 93-126, November.
    6. Osterwald-Lenum, Michael, 1992. "A Note with Quantiles of the Asymptotic Distribution of the Maximum Likelihood Cointegration Rank Test Statistics," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 54(3), pages 461-472, August.
    7. Liuren Wu & Frank Xiaoling Zhang, 2008. "A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Macroeconomic Determinants of the Credit Spread Term Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(6), pages 1160-1175, June.
    8. Schaefer, Stephen M. & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2008. "Structural models of credit risk are useful: Evidence from hedge ratios on corporate bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 1-19, October.
    9. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    10. 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.
    11. Hansen, Peter Reinhard, 2003. "Structural changes in the cointegrated vector autoregressive model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 261-295, June.
    12. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert, 2002. "Regime Switches in Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 163-182, April.
    13. Longstaff, Francis A & Schwartz, Eduardo S, 1995. "A Simple Approach to Valuing Risky Fixed and Floating Rate Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 789-819, July.
    14. Johansen, Soren, 1995. "Likelihood-Based Inference in Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Models," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774501.
    15. Estrella, Arturo, 1998. "A New Measure of Fit for Equations with Dichotomous Dependent Variables," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(2), pages 198-205, April.
    16. Arturo Estrella & Mary R. Trubin, 2006. "The yield curve as a leading indicator: some practical issues," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 12(Jul).
    17. Richard H. Clarida & Lucio Sarno & Mark P. Taylor & Giorgio Valente, 2006. "The Role of Asymmetries and Regime Shifts in the Term Structure of Interest Rates," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1193-1224, May.
    18. Edwin J. Elton & Martin J. Gruber & Deepak Agrawal & Christopher Mann, 2001. "Explaining the Rate Spread on Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 247-277, February.
    19. Gregory R. Duffee, 1998. "The Relation Between Treasury Yields and Corporate Bond Yield Spreads," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 2225-2241, December.
    20. Davies, Andrew, 2008. "Credit spread determinants: An 85 year perspective," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 180-197, May.
    21. Alexander David, 2008. "Inflation Uncertainty, Asset Valuations, and the Credit Spreads Puzzle," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(6), pages 2487-2534, November.
    22. Bhanot, Karan, 2005. "What causes mean reversion in corporate bond index spreads? The impact of survival," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1385-1403, June.
    23. Pierre Collin-Dufresn & Robert S. Goldstein & J. Spencer Martin, 2001. "The Determinants of Credit Spread Changes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2177-2207, December.
    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. Bhanu Pratap Singh Thakur & M. Kannadhasan & Vinay Goyal, 2018. "Determinants of corporate credit spread: evidence from India," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 45(1), pages 59-73, March.
    2. Li, Xiao-Lin & Li, Xin & Si, Deng-Kui, 2020. "Asymmetric determinants of corporate bond credit spreads in China: Evidence from a nonlinear ARDL model," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).

    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. Batten, Jonathan A. & Jacoby, Gady & Liao, Rose C., 2014. "Corporate yield spreads and real interest rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 89-100.
    2. Fischer, Henning & Stolper, Oscar, 2019. "The nonlinear dynamics of corporate bond spreads: Regime-dependent effects of their determinants," Discussion Papers 08/2019, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    3. Stephanie Heck, 2022. "Corporate bond yields and returns: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 36(2), pages 179-201, June.
    4. Becchetti, Leonardo & Carpentieri, Andrea & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2009. "The determinants of option-adjusted delta credit spreads : a comparative analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom and the euro area," Research Discussion Papers 34/2009, Bank of Finland.
    5. Carol Alexander & Andreas Kaeck, 2006. "Regimes in CDS Spreads: A Markov Switching Model of iTraxx Europe Indices," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2006-08, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    6. Becchetti, Leonardo & Carpentieri, Andrea & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2009. "The determinants of option-adjusted delta credit spreads: a comparative analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom and the euro area," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 34/2009, Bank of Finland.
    7. Antonio Trujillo-Ponce & Reyes Samaniego-Medina & Clara Cardone-Riportella, 2014. "Examining what best explains corporate credit risk: accounting-based versus market-based models," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 253-276, April.
    8. Alexander, Carol & Kaeck, Andreas, 2008. "Regime dependent determinants of credit default swap spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1008-1021, June.
    9. Chi-Fai Lo & Cho-Hoi Hui, 2016. "Pricing Corporate Bonds With Interest Rates Following Double Square-root Process," Working Papers 112016, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    10. Bhanu Pratap Singh Thakur & M. Kannadhasan & Vinay Goyal, 2018. "Determinants of corporate credit spread: evidence from India," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 45(1), pages 59-73, March.
    11. Leonardo Becchetti & Andrea Carpentieri & Iftekhar Hasan, 2012. "Option†Adjusted Delta Credit Spreads: a Cross†Country Analysis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 18(2), pages 183-217, March.
    12. Ramaprasad Bhar, 2010. "Stochastic Filtering with Applications in Finance," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7736, January.
    13. Chi-Fai Lo & Cho-Hoi Hui, 2016. "Pricing corporate bonds with interest rates following double square-root process," International Journal of Financial Engineering (IJFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03), pages 1-31, September.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2009_034 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    16. Maalaoui Chun, Olfa & Dionne, Georges & François, Pascal, 2014. "Credit spread changes within switching regimes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 41-55.
    17. Alena Audzeyeva & Xu Wang, 2023. "Fundamentals, real-time uncertainty and CDS index spreads," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 1-33, July.
    18. Pu, Xiaoling & Zhao, Xinlei, 2012. "Correlation in credit risk changes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1093-1106.
    19. Guha, Rajiv & Sbuelz, Alessandro & Tarelli, Andrea, 2020. "Structural recovery of face value at default," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 1148-1171.
    20. Liuren Wu & Frank Xiaoling Zhang, 2008. "A No-Arbitrage Analysis of Macroeconomic Determinants of the Credit Spread Term Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(6), pages 1160-1175, June.
    21. Tang, Dragon Yongjun & Yan, Hong, 2010. "Market conditions, default risk and credit spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 743-753, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Credit spreads; Term spreads; Regime shifts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:eee:joecas:v:14:y:2016:i:pa:p:39-51. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-journal-of-economic-asymmetries/ .

    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.