We find that four well-known characteristics (carry, defensive, momentum and value) explain a significant portion of the cross-sectional variation in corporate bond excess returns. These characteristics have positive risk-adjusted expected returns and are not subsumed by traditional market...

We offer several suggestions for researchers using corporate bond return data. First, despite clear instructions from older papers (e.g., Bessembinder et al. 2009) about ways to compute credit excess returns, a lot of recent research simply subtracts a Treasury-bill return. We show that this...

We argue that corporate bond yields reflect fears of debt deflation. When debt is nominal, unexpectedly low inflation increases real liabilities and default risk. In a real business cycle model with optimal but infrequent capital structure choice, more uncertain or pro-cyclical inflation leads...