Credit spreads on sterling corporate bonds and the term structure of UK interest rates

Jeremy Leake

Bank of England working papers from Bank of England

Abstract: In this paper the relationship between credit spreads on sterling corporate bonds and the term structure of UK interest rates is explored. In particular, the question of whether credit spreads are a reliable indicator of corporate bond default risk is examined. Using daily price quotes from 1990 to 1998, a small negative relationship is identified between credit spreads on sterling investment-grade corporate bonds and the level and slope of the term structure of UK interest rates. The results are weaker than those found by some previous studies which examined the relationship between US corporate bond credit spreads and the term structure of US interest rates. The weakness of the relationship suggests that credit spreads on sterling investment-grade corporate bonds have been driven by factors other than default risk. If so, we should be cautious in interpreting such credit spreads as measures of bond default risk. This result is important to both those in the field of financial stability interested in leading indicators of corporate defaults, and to monetary policy makers interested in the impact of interest rate changes on corporate bond default risk. Similar work should be repeated for sterling sub investment-grade corporate bonds once a sufficiently large data set can be assembled.

Date: 2003-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fin, nep-fmk and nep-rmg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/h ... apers/2003/wp202.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/2003/wp202.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/workingpapers/2003/wp202.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boe:boeewp:202

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bank of England working papers from Bank of England Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Media Team ().