Time-Varying Importance of Country and Industry Factors in European Corporate Bonds
53 Pages Posted: 21 Feb 2014 Last revised: 1 Feb 2016
Date Written: February 20, 2014
Abstract
In this paper we study financial integration in Europe by looking at the time-varying relative importance of country versus industry factors in the European corporate bond market. Using a unique dataset that is representative for the universe of actively quoted corporate bonds, we find that although unconditionally the country factor dominates the industry factor, there is substantial time variation and no trend towards full integration. Breaks in the variation correspond with several important events in the European financial market integration, such as the introduction of the Euro and the sovereign debt crisis.
Keywords: market integration, corporate bond markets, factor decomposition, Sovereign debt crisis
JEL Classification: G12, G15, F36
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