IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v60y2005i5p2213-2253.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk or Liquidity? New Evidence from the Credit Default Swap Market

Author

Listed:
  • FRANCIS A. LONGSTAFF
  • SANJAY MITHAL
  • ERIC NEIS

Abstract

We use the information in credit default swaps to obtain direct measures of the size of the default and nondefault components in corporate spreads. We find that the majority of the corporate spread is due to default risk. This result holds for all rating categories and is robust to the definition of the riskless curve. We also find that the nondefault component is time varying and strongly related to measures of bond‐specific illiquidity as well as to macroeconomic measures of bond market liquidity.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:60:y:2005:i:5:p:2213-2253
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00797.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00797.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00797.x?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acharya, Viral V. & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2005. "Asset pricing with liquidity risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 375-410, August.
    2. Robert A. Jarrow, 2009. "Credit Risk Models," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 37-68, November.
    3. Jarrow, Robert A. & Turnbull, Stuart M., 2000. "The intersection of market and credit risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 271-299, January.
    4. Darrell Duffie, 1999. "Credit Swap Valuation," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(1), pages 73-87, January.
    5. Goldstein, Robert & Ju, Nengjiu & Leland, Hayne, 2001. "An EBIT-Based Model of Dynamic Capital Structure," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(4), pages 483-512, October.
    6. Delianedis, Gordon & Geske, Robert, 2001. "The Components of Corporate Credit Spreads: Default, Recovery, Tax, Jumps, Liquidity, and Market Factors," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt32x284q3, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    7. Duffee, Gregory R, 1999. "Estimating the Price of Default Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(1), pages 197-226.
    8. Didier Cossin & Tomas Hricko & Daniel Aunon-Nerin & Zhijiang Huang, 2002. "Exploring for the Determinants of Credit Risk in Credit Default Swap Transaction Data: Is Fixed-Income Markets’ Information Suffcient to Evaluate Credit Risk?," FAME Research Paper Series rp65, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    9. Leland, Hayne E, 1994. "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1213-1252, September.
    10. Pan, Jun, 2002. "The jump-risk premia implicit in options: evidence from an integrated time-series study," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 3-50, January.
    11. Houweling, Patrick & Vorst, Ton, 2005. "Pricing default swaps: Empirical evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(8), pages 1200-1225, December.
    12. Duffie, Darrell & Garleanu, Nicolae & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2002. "Securities lending, shorting, and pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 307-339.
    13. Geczy, Christopher C. & Musto, David K. & Reed, Adam V., 2002. "Stocks are special too: an analysis of the equity lending market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 241-269.
    14. Darrell Duffie & Jun Liu, 2001. "Floating–Fixed Credit Spreads," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(3), pages 76-87, May.
    15. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. Norden, Lars & Weber, Martin, 2004. "Informational efficiency of credit default swap and stock markets: The impact of credit rating announcements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(11), pages 2813-2843, November.
    17. 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.
    18. Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Special Repo Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 493-526, June.
    19. Hull, John & Predescu, Mirela & White, Alan, 2004. "The relationship between credit default swap spreads, bond yields, and credit rating announcements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(11), pages 2789-2811, November.
    20. Darrell Duffie & Jun Pan & Kenneth Singleton, 2000. "Transform Analysis and Asset Pricing for Affine Jump-Diffusions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1343-1376, November.
    21. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1997. "An Econometric Model of the Term Structure of Interest-Rate Swap Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1287-1321, September.
    22. Sanjiv Ranjan Das & Rangarajan K. Sundaram, 2000. "A Discrete-Time Approach to Arbitrage-Free Pricing of Credit Derivatives," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 46-62, January.
    23. Roberto Blanco & Simon Brennan & Ian W Marsh, 2004. "An empirical analysis of the dynamic relationship between investment-grade bonds and credit default swaps," Bank of England working papers 211, Bank of England.
    24. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    25. Robert A. Jarrow & Stuart M. Turnbull, 2008. "Pricing Derivatives on Financial Securities Subject to Credit Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 17, pages 377-409, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    26. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:5:p:1351-60 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. 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.
    28. Buraschi, Andrea & Menini, Davide, 2002. "Liquidity risk and specialness," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 243-284, May.
    29. Das, Sanjiv Ranjan & Acharya, Viral & Sundaram, Rangarajan K, 2002. "Pricing Credit Derivatives with Rating Transitions," CEPR Discussion Papers 3329, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    30. 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)

    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. Longstaff, Francis A. & Mithal, Sanjay & Neis, Eric, 2004. "Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk or Liquidity? New Evidence from the Credit-Default Swap Market, previously titled: "The Credit-Default Swap Market: Is Credit Protection Priced Correctly?&qu," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt8gn7h03k, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    2. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    3. repec:wyi:journl:002109 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Michael Adler & Jeong Song, 2010. "The behavior of emerging market sovereigns' credit default swap premiums and bond yield spreads," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 31-58.
    5. Song Han & Hao Zhou, 2016. "Effects of Liquidity on the Non-Default Component of Corporate Yield Spreads: Evidence from Intraday Transactions Data," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(03), pages 1-49, September.
    6. Kwamie Dunbar, 2008. "US corporate default swap valuation: the market liquidity hypothesis and autonomous credit risk," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 321-334.
    7. Duffie, Darrell, 2003. "Intertemporal asset pricing theory," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 639-742, Elsevier.
    8. Haibin Zhu, 2006. "An Empirical Comparison of Credit Spreads between the Bond Market and the Credit Default Swap Market," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 29(3), pages 211-235, June.
    9. Qiang Dai & Kenneth Singleton, 2003. "Term Structure Dynamics in Theory and Reality," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 631-678, July.
    10. Ramaprasad Bhar, 2010. "Stochastic Filtering with Applications in Finance," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7736, August.
    11. Frank X. Zhang, 2003. "What did the credit market expect of Argentina default? Evidence from default swap data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-25, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. 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.
    13. Duffie, Darrell, 2005. "Credit risk modeling with affine processes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2751-2802, November.
    14. Dragon Tang & Hong Yan, 2006. "Macroeconomic Conditions, Firm Characteristics, and Credit Spreads," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 29(3), pages 177-210, June.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Forte, Santiago, 2006. "Credit spreads: theory and evidence about the information content of stocks, bonds and cdss," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb063310, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    19. Specht, Leon, 2023. "An Empirical Analysis of European Credit Default Swap Spread Dynamics," Junior Management Science (JUMS), Junior Management Science e. V., vol. 8(1), pages 1-42.
    20. Stephen Zamore & Kwame Ohene Djan & Ilan Alon & Bersant Hobdari, 2018. "Credit Risk Research: Review and Agenda," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(4), pages 811-835, March.
    21. Diaz Weigel, Diana & Gemmill, Gordon, 2006. "What drives credit risk in emerging markets? The roles of country fundamentals and market co-movements," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 476-502, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

    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:bla:jfinan:v:60:y:2005:i:5:p:2213-2253. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afaaaea.html .

    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.