A New Test for an Old Puzzle

Lorenzo Bretscher, Peter Feldhütter, Andrew Kane and Lukas Schmid
Additional contact information
Lorenzo Bretscher: Swiss Finance Institute - HEC Lausanne; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
Peter Feldhütter: Copenhagen Business School
Andrew Kane: Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Lukas Schmid: University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

No 24-67, Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series from Swiss Finance Institute

Abstract: Traditional tests of the credit spread puzzle are imprecise. We show that a key input of these tests, the equity Sharpe ratio, is difficult to estimate in available empirical samples. Instead, we show that the difference between the Sharpe ratios of debt returns and equity returns provides a more precise test. Using the new test we find no evidence for a credit spread puzzle in the corporate bond market: after controlling for the unexpected decline in interest rates beginning in the 1990s, the Sharpe ratios of equity and bonds of high quality firms are nearly identical. However, we uncover a new puzzle in the market for bank debt: loan returns have higher Sharpe ratios than equity returns.

Keywords: credit spread puzzle; credit risk; corporate debt; bond pricing; loan pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2024-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fmk
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2467

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