Journal Article

What determines the credit spread?


Abstract: Although the swings in economic measures during the last recession and recovery were fairly modest, swings in financial markets were quite large. Once financial markets found their footing, after steep losses in 2000-2002, prices on virtually all traded financial claims rose as the economic outlook improved. This pattern was particularly true in the corporate bond market. In this Economic Letter I describe the significant narrowing of bond spreads across different sectors and ratings classes since the last recession. I also discuss recent research on the determinants of relative pricing in the corporate bond market.

Keywords: bond markets; Corporate bonds;

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Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Part of Series: FRBSF Economic Letter

Publication Date: 2004

Order Number: 36