Prior literature mostly finds bond yield spreads to be insufficiently explained by credit risk (the 'credit spread puzzle'). Recently, Feldhütter and Schaefer (2018) and Bai et al. (2020) revived this debate. We utilize the removal of sovereign guarantees for savings banks and state banks in...

Credit spreads are the yields of risky debt securities minus risk-free rates. The finance literature has long argued which share of them is due to credit risk and which share results from other factors. We suggest a novel set of multiple quasi-natural experiments based on government guarantees...