The Cross-Section of Credit Risk Premia and Equity Returns

Nils Friewald, Christian Wagner and Josef Zechner

Journal of Finance, 2014, vol. 69, issue 6, 2419-2469

Abstract: type="main">

We explore the link between a firm's stock returns and credit risk using a simple insight from structural models following Merton ( ): risk premia on equity and credit instruments are related because all claims on assets must earn the same compensation per unit of risk. Consistent with theory, we find that firms' stock returns increase with credit risk premia estimated from CDS spreads. Credit risk premia contain information not captured by physical or risk-neutral default probabilities alone. This sheds new light on the “distress puzzle”—the lack of a positive relation between equity returns and default probabilities—reported in previous studies.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/jofi.12143 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:bla:jfinan:v:69:y:2014:i:6:p:2419-2469

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.afajof.org/membership/join.asp

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Finance from American Finance Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().