Most welfare states design their tax/benefit system to combat income poverty. Some countries are more effective in poverty alleviation than others. What can explain these variations in outcomes and effectiveness? And has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time and...

Using an aggregate credit spread index, we find that it has substantial predictive power for corporate bond returns over short and long horizons. The return predictability is economically and statistically significant and robust to various controls. The credit spread index and its components...