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

Francis Longstaff, Sanjay Mithal and Eric Neis

No 10418, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: G1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fmk
Note: AP
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Published as Longstaff, Francis A., Sanjay Mithal and Eric Neis. "Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk Or Liquidity? New Evidence From The Credit Default Swap Market," Journal of Finance, 2005, v60(5,Oct), 2213-2253.

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Journal Article: Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk or Liquidity? New Evidence from the Credit Default Swap Market (2005)
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