IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v29y2001i5p394-411.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bond Insurance Utilization and Yield Spreads in the Municipal Bond Market

Author

Listed:
  • Dwight V. Denison

    (New York University)

Abstract

In recent years, commercial insurance companies insured nearly half of the annual issue of government bonds against bond default. This article illustrates that one impetus for the increasing popularity of municipal bond insurance is the segmentation of the municipal bond market into two markets: one characterized by an excess demand for low-risk credits and the other characterized by an excess supply of higher risk credits. The empirical findings indicate that the volume of insured bonds issued each quarter is influenced by the average yield spread between high- and low-risk municipal bonds and by the holdings of municipal bonds at financial institutions. On the other hand, the volume of insured municipal bonds issued in a quarter influences the average spread among high- and low-risk bonds. These findings underscore market segmentation and investors’ risk aversion as forces motivating the utilization of municipal bond insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Dwight V. Denison, 2001. "Bond Insurance Utilization and Yield Spreads in the Municipal Bond Market," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(5), pages 394-411, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:29:y:2001:i:5:p:394-411
    DOI: 10.1177/109114210102900503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114210102900503
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114210102900503?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brick, John R & Thompson, Howard E, 1978. "Time Series Analysis of Interest Rates: Some Additional Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 93-103, March.
    2. Marquette, R. Penny & Wilson, Earl R., 1992. "The case for mandatory municipal disclosure: Do seasoned municipal bond yields impound publicly available information?," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 181-206.
    3. Richard B. Harper & Stephen D. Smith, 1993. "Private insurance of public debt: another look at the costs and benefits of municipal insurance," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Sep, pages 27-38.
    4. Hsueh, L Paul & Chandy, P R, 1989. "An Examination of the Yield Spread between Insured and Uninsured Debt," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 12(3), pages 235-244, Fall.
    5. L Paul Hsueh & P. R. Chandy, 1989. "An Examination Of The Yield Spread Between Insured And Uninsured Debt," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 12(3), pages 235-244, September.
    6. Kidwell, David S. & Sorensen, Eric H. & Wachowicz, John M., 1987. "Estimating the Signaling Benefits of Debt Insurance: The Case of Municipal Bonds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 299-313, September.
    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. Racheva-Sarabian, Anna & Ryvkin, Dmitry & Semykina, Anastasia, 2015. "The default of special district financing: Evidence from California," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 37-48.
    2. repec:eme:qrfmpp:v:3:y:2011:i:2:p:68-83 is not listed 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. Chris Downing & Frank X. Zhang, 2002. "Trading activity and price volatility in the municipal bond market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-39, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Fairchild, Lisa M. & Koch, Timothy W., 1998. "The Impact of State Disclosure Requirements on Municipal Yields," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(4), pages 733-753, December.
    3. Fairchild, Lisa M. & Koch, Timothy W., 1998. "The Impact of State Disclosure Requirements on Municipal Yields," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 4), pages 733-53, December.
    4. Donati, Paola & Donati, Francesco, 2008. "Modelling and Forecasting the Yield Curve under Model uncertainty," Working Paper Series 917, European Central Bank.
    5. Junghack Kim & Bruce D McDonald & Jongmin Shon, 2022. "Does the charter form lead to lower borrowing costs? Examining the case of California local governments," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(1), pages 85-102, March.
    6. L Paul Hsueh & P. R. Chandy, 1989. "An Examination Of The Yield Spread Between Insured And Uninsured Debt," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 12(3), pages 235-244, September.
    7. Christine R. Martell & Robert S. Kravchuk, 2010. "Bond Insurance and Liquidity Provision: Impacts in the Municipal Variable Rate Debt Market, 2008-09," Public Finance Review, , vol. 38(3), pages 378-401, May.
    8. Jayaraman Vijayakumar & Kenneth Daniels, 2006. "The Role and Impact of Financial Advisors in the Market for Municipal Bonds," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 30(1), pages 43-68, August.
    9. Janilson Antonio da Silva Suzart & Ariovaldo dos Santos, 2016. "The Predictive Value of Government Accounting Information and the Secondary Brazilian Bond Market," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(4), pages 31-44, April.
    10. Dario Cestau & Burton Hollifield & Dan Li & Norman Schürhoff, 2019. "Municipal Bond Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 65-84, December.
    11. Stéphanie Serve, 2002. "Le recours au financement désintermédié par une collectivité locale et l'évaluation de la prime de risque obligataire: le cas de la ville de Marseille," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 5(2), pages 107-142, June.
    12. Lang (Kate) Yang & Ruth Winecoff, 2022. "Municipal bond sectoral risk and information intermediation in uncertain times: Evidence from the Covid‐19 pandemic," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 34-53, December.
    13. Singh, Sandeep & Dresnack, William H., 1997. "Market knowledge in managed municipal bond portfolios," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 185-196.
    14. Kriz, Kenneth A., 2003. "Comparative costs of negotiated versus competitive bond sales: new evidence from state general obligation bonds," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 191-211.
    15. Gary S. Shea, 1985. "Long memory models of interest rates, the term structure, and variance bounds tests," International Finance Discussion Papers 258, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Lang (Kate) Yang & Yulianti Abbas, 2020. "General‐Purpose Local Government Defaults: Type, Trend, and Impact," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 62-85, December.
    17. Natee Amornsiripanitch, 2022. "Bond Insurance and Public Sector Employment," Working Papers 22-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    18. John M. Halstead & Shantaram Hegde & Linda Schmid Klein, 2004. "Orange County Bankruptcy: Financial Contagion in the Municipal Bond and Bank Equity Markets," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 39(2), pages 293-315, May.
    19. Kirstein Annette & Kirstein Roland & Gerhard Hans, 2010. "Bad Debt Loss Insurance in Settlement and Litigation," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 107-124, May.
    20. Kirstein, Roland & Gerhard, Hans, 2005. "The "Rainmaker's Dilemma": Bad Debt Loss Insurance in Settlement and Litigation," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2005-02, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.

    More about this item

    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:sae:pubfin:v:29:y:2001:i:5:p:394-411. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.