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The Information in the High Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications

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Author Info
Mark Gertler
Cara S. Lown

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Abstract

The market for high yield (below investment-grade) corporate bonds developed in the middle 1980s. We show that, since this time, the high yield spread has had significant explanatory power for the business cycle. We interpret this finding as possibly symptomatic of financial factors at work in the business cycle, along the lines suggested by the financial accelerator. We also show that over this period the high yield spread outperforms other leading financial indicators, including the term spread, the paper-bill spread and the Federal Funds rate. We conjecture that changes in the conduct of monetary policy over time may account for the reduced informativeness of these alternative indicators, all of which are tied closely to monetary policy.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 7549.

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Date of creation: Feb 2000
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7549

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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  15. Ben S. Bernanke & Ilian Mihov, 1998. "Measuring Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(3), pages 869-902, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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