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The Review of Asset Pricing Studies Vol. 13 No. 4 2023

Which Factors for Corporate Bond Returns?

Thuy Duong Dang1; Fabian Hollstein2; Marcel Prokopczuk3

1 Leibniz University Hannover , Germany · 2 Saarland University , Germany · 3 Leibniz University Hannover , Germany , and University of Reading, U.K

Abstract

Factors related to carry, duration, equity momentum, and the term structure are the most important risk factors in corporate bond markets. From a large set of factor candidates, we condense an optimal model with a two-step approach. First, we filter out factors that do not systematically move bond prices. Second, we use a Bayesian model selection approach to determine the optimal, parsimonious model. Many prominent factors do not move prices or are redundant. We document the new model’s good performance compared to that of existing models in time-series and cross-sectional tests and analyze the economic drivers of the factors.

DOI
10.1093/rapstu/raad005
Volume
13
Issue
4
Pages
615-652
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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