The Market Price of Credit Risk and Economic States
Posted: 18 Feb 2015 Last revised: 3 Mar 2015
Date Written: February 8, 2015
Abstract
This paper proposes a market-wide credit risk factor for the US stock market and investigates its properties that are dependent on economic conditions. The market price of credit risk is found to be statistically significantly negative, supporting earlier studies. However, a sample-split analysis reveals that this negative pay-off is non-existent in a later subsample, indicating that the credit risk puzzle is based on temporary mispricing related to the earlier subsample. Further investigation shows that mispricing in the earlier period was mainly driven by positive pay-offs of low credit risk firms, while high credit risk firms did not generate significant returns in any of the sub-periods.
Keywords: Asset pricing, Credit rating, Credit risk, Economic states, Business cycle, Market price of credit risk
JEL Classification: G12, G14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
