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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 142 No. 3 2021

Is there a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market? Time-series and cross-sectional evidence

Jennie Bai; Turan G. Bali; Quan Wen

Georgetown University

open access

Abstract

We provide time-series and cross-sectional evidence on the significance of a risk-return tradeoff in the bond and equity markets. We find a significantly positive intertemporal relation between expected return and risk in the bond market. We also propose novel measures of systematic and idiosyncratic risk for individual corporate bonds and find a significantly positive cross-sectional relation between systematic risk and expected bond returns, whereas there is no significant link between idiosyncratic risk and future bond returns. We provide an explanation for the significance of systematic (idiosyncratic) risk based on different investor preferences and informational frictions in the bond (equity) market.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.05.003
Volume
142
Issue
3
Pages
1017-1037
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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