Determinants of credit spreads on U.S. dollar-denominated Asian corporate bonds

This study investigates determinants of credit spreads on U.S. dollar-denominated Asian corporate bonds. Using a country-level unbalanced panel dataset of Asian corporate bond indices, I find that global factors including U.S. corporate bond spreads and the U.S. long-term Treasury yield are main determinants of Asian corporate bond spreads. Principal component analysis also demonstrates that only a few variables account for the variation in Asian corporate bond spreads. Moreover, global factors have the greatest impact on credit spreads in the financial sector and the smallest impact on credit spreads in the utility sector. Finally, my results show that Asian corporate credit spreads respond more substantially to the U.S. monetary easing than to the U.S. monetary tightening, and they also react more strongly to widening U.S. credit spreads than to narrowing U.S. credit spreads.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Jo, Sungmin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Deborah Lucas.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90219

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/90219