Sovereign risk premiums in the European government bond market

This paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among EU government bonds on the basis of a unique data set of issue spreads in the US and DM (Euro) bond market between 1993 and 2009. Interest differentials between bonds issued by EU countries and Germany or the USA contain risk premiums which increase with fiscal imbalances and depend negatively on the issuer’s relative bond market size. The start of the European Monetary Union has shifted market attention to deficit and debt service payments as key measures of fiscal soundness and eliminated liquidity premiums in the euro area. With the financial crisis, the cost of loose fiscal policy has increased considerably.     

THE DEBT MATURITY CHOICE: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

In this paper I develop and test three nonmutually exclusive hypotheses about the determinants of corporations' debt maturity choices using a sample of corporate bonds issued between 1982 and 1986. The empirical evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that firms use bond maturity to facilitate monitoring by outsiders (the monitoring hypothesis) and weakly supports the hypothesis that firms with high-quality projects use bond maturity to signal project quality (the signaling hypothesis). The evidence does not support the hypothesis that firms use bond maturity to achieve an optimal trade-off between interest tax shields and bankruptcy costs (the tax/bankruptcy cost hypothesis).     

Amalgamation,free-rider behavior,and regulation

Amalgamation incentivizes municipalities to increase public debt because it allows them to subrogate their repayment and interest burden on the entire municipality after amalgamation. Smaller municipalities, in particular, tend to accumulate public debt in order to free-ride. Previous studies have shown this kind of opportunistic behavior in countries where municipalities can issue bonds freely in the market. However, in Japan, municipalities cannot issue bonds freely by regulation. When such regulation controls debt accumulation by the merging municipality, the free-rider effect should be weak. This study examines the relationship between the regulation of local government borrowing and free-rider behavior of Japanese municipalities. The difference-in-difference regression results confirm the existence of a free-rider effect in this regard. Moreover, the debt expenditure ratio, the index of the regulation of local public bond issues, has the same effect that prevents local public debt from increasing for both merging and never-merged municipalities. This fact shows that a merging municipality with a free-rider incentive cannot increase local public debt to excess by using the regulation. Therefore, the average free-rider effect per capita is approximately 7 % of the average local public debt per capita for the end of the pre-treatment period. This result is considerably lower than the effects of the Swedish cases.     

基于KMV模型的地方政府债券信用风险问题研究

借助于KMV模型的思想建立了地方政府债券信用风险模型,进一步探讨了模型的概率分布形态以提高模型的预测精度;并在确定预测标准后,针对2009年已发行地方政府债券的部分省市计算了各地安全发债规模。研究表明,基于KMV模型的地方政府债券信用风险模型具有很强的应用性和很好的推广前景;实践中,在对发债主体进行科学选择的基础上,通过该模型能实现对发债规模的控制,达到防止其发生信用风险的可能;同时,所选样本省市(除新疆外)的预测安全发债规模和实际发债额是合理的和安全的。因此,应建立一套科学规范的地方政府债券风险防控机制,以保证地方政府债券的健康发展。     

The relative and incremental explanatory powers of dirty surplus items for debt interest rate

This study investigates the relationship between dirty surplus items on the balance sheet and the cost of debt for Japanese firms. We focus on three dirty surplus items—unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale securities (SEC), foreign currency translation adjustment (FOC), and land revaluation surplus (LAND). While many previous studies on dirty surplus adopted the value-relevance perspective, we examine the effect of dirty surplus items on the interest rate spread of bonds from the bond market perspective. We use the [Vuong, Q. H. (1989). Likelihood ratio tests for model selection and non-nested hypotheses. Econometrica, 57, 307–333] test to evaluate the relative explanatory power of the equity ratio with and without dirty surplus items for the interest rate spread on bonds issued. We find evidence that the equity ratio with dirty surplus items is more strongly associated with the debt interest rate than that without dirty surplus items. The results suggest that the total amount of dirty surplus items have statistically significant explanatory power for the interest rate spread. However, some dirty surplus items do not have explanatory powers for the bond interest rate spread. While FOC has relative and incremental explanatory powers and SEC has only incremental explanatory power, LAND has neither relative nor incremental explanatory power for the bond interest rate spread. The results mean that FOC and SEC are useful to Japanese bond investors.     

Advance Refundings of Municipal Bonds

The advance refunding of debt is a widespread practice in municipal finance. In an advance refunding, municipalities retire callable bonds early and refund them with bonds with lower coupon rates. We find that 85% of all advance refundings occur at a net present value loss, and that the aggregate losses over the past 20 years exceed $15 billion. We explore why municipalities advance refund their debt at loss. Financially constrained municipalities may face pressure to advance refund since it allows them to reduce short‐term cash outflows. We find strong evidence that financial constraints are a major driver of advance refunding activity.     

Underpricing of Newly Issued Bonds: Evidence from the Swiss Capital Market

The pricing of newly issued bonds on the Swiss capital market is investigated over the years 1980–1982. The results reveal a slight underpricing of new bonds at the issue date that is roughly equal to the difference in transactions costs between the markets for new and seasoned bonds. Underpricing is no longer observed when the new bonds start to be traded on the stock exchange, that is, after about two days. Tests of several hypotheses show that unexpected changes in interest rates over the offering period explain part of the underpricing.     

The association of departures from spending rate equilibrium to municipal borrowing cost

The U.S. municipal bond market has grown dramatically in recent decades. Debt financing has become a more important source of capital for municipalities, yet research into the association of fiscal management and borrowing cost has not been directly addressed since before GASB's formation in 1984. We attempt to fill this void and contribute to the dialog concerning municipal managerial competence and its association with borrowing cost by studying a sample of 3285 county general obligation bonds over a 13-year period. We resolve conflicting and counterintuitive results in prior work and demonstrate that the lowest borrowing cost is achieved where general fund revenues equal general fund expenditures (i.e., equilibrium spending rate). Further, we find that the association between spending rate and borrowing cost is nonmonotonic, nonlinear, and asymmetric. We demonstrate that maintenance of a spending rate equilibrium point may be a way of achieving minimum borrowing cost. In the context of fiscal constraints and the increased reliance on credit markets by municipalities, managing to the spending rate equilibrium may reduce the borrowing costs of providing municipal services.     

Factors affecting the yields of emerging market issuers: Evidence from the Asia-Pacific region

We investigate the yield spread between the sovereign bonds issued in international markets by major Asia-Pacific issuers (China, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) and matched with near maturity benchmark U.S. Treasury bonds (2, 5, 10 year maturities) to determine the extent that various factors affect changes in credit spreads. The results suggest that the credit spreads of these sovereign bonds tend to be negatively related to changes in interest rates on U.S. benchmark bonds and positively related to changes in the slope of the yield curve. The asset and exchange rate variables were only significant for spreads on Philippine bonds where it was negatively related to changes in the local stock market index, and positively to changes in the exchange rate. The complex dynamics of these processes highlight concerns for portfolio mangers when constructing portfolios of sovereign Asian bonds by aggregating bonds of different credit ratings.     

The impact of the sovereign debt crisis on the activity of Italian banks

We examine the implications of the sovereign debt tensions on the Italian credit market by estimating the effect of the 10-year BTP-Bund spread on a wide array of bank interest rates, categories of loans and income statement variables. We exploit the heterogeneity between large and small intermediaries to assess to what extent the transmission of sovereign risk differed in relation with different banks’ balance-sheet characteristics and business strategies. Regarding the cost of funding, we find that changes in the BTP-Bund spread have a sizeable effect on the interest rates on term deposits and newly issued bonds but virtually no effect on overnight deposits. Furthermore, the sovereign spread significantly affects the cost of credit for firms and households and exerts a negative effect on loan growth. All these results are magnified when considering alone the five largest banks, which are typically less capitalized, have a larger funding gap and incidence of bad loans and rely more on non-traditional banking activities. Sovereign tensions also affect the main items of banks’ income statement.     

Effect of Underwriter Prestige on the Interest Cost of Municipal Bond Offerings

The authors use tombstones from Investment Dealers' Digest to develop continuous and bracket prestige measures of underwriters in the municipal bond market. The measures are used in multivariate analysis of 409 offerings to examine the relationship between net interest cost to the issuer and prestige of the lead underwriter. Multiple regression analysis reveals that issuers in the sample do not receive statistically significant positive benefits from using prestigious underwriters. The authors note that their results are consistent with segmentation of the market for municipal bonds.     

A theoretical deficiency in accounting for bonds

Accounting for bonds payable issued at a premium or discount between interest payment dates poses some interesting theoretical problems. Nine Intermediate Accounting textbooks were examined, and only two were found to deal with the topic, neither at a theoretical level. When the theoretical value is calculated for a bond issued at a discount or premium between interest payment dates, the computed value includes the accrued interest. The usual approach is to record the collection of accrued interest separately from the bond proceeds. Unless the bond is recorded correctly the premium or discount does not amortize properly. This paper examines the recording of the accrued interest, and offers some suggestions for teaching this topic in courses beyond the introductory level.     

Debt Schedules of Tax-Exempt Bonds Using NIC

Municipal bonds are a large proportion of the total number of securities offered every year. The volume outstanding is more than that of all federal agency debt. It is important that the issuance procedure be as cost efficient as possible. This research develops a model to minimize the net interest cost of a municipal bond issue. Net interest cost remains a highly popular award criteria. The model incorporates the level and shape of the yield curve, the schedule of revenue to be received, and the segmented nature of the municipal market.     

Liquidity and price pressure in the corporate bond market: evidence from mega-bonds

Larger bonds offer greater liquidity, which should reduce their yields. A simple way for firms to reduce financing costs is to sell bonds with large face values. We find that mega-bonds are more liquid than smaller bonds. However, offering yield spreads on mega-bonds are not lower and are higher than spreads of bonds issued by similar companies. The discount applied to large new issues is consistent with price pressure effects that are also present in the secondary market prices of the issuing firm's existing bonds. Our results suggest a hidden cost to issuing very liquid bonds.     

我国国债发行规模影响因素分析

在全球金融危机加深以及我国实体经济下行的背景下,我国实施积极的财政政策,把“扩内需,保增长,调结构”作为当前经济工作的第一要务。今年全国财政预算赤字为9500亿元,将发行7500亿元的国债和2000亿元的地方债,从绝对数额来看是历年最多的。本文对影响我国国债发行的各种规模因素进行了全面分析,提出了相应的政策建议。     

Issuer-oriented underpricing costs in initial public offers: Evidence from Hong Kong

This paper estimates the underpricing cost associated with new shares issued and sold when firms go public in a traditional British-style IPO market in contrast to prior work which focussed on the underpricing cost to pre-IPO investors. Secondly, the estimates account for interest income on application funds received by issuing firms. Using data from the Hong Kong IPO market, the results show that the issuer underpricing cost of new share issues is on average only 14% of headline underpricing. When interest on application funds is taken into account, net issuer underpricing cost reduces to just around 7% of headline underpricing. This finding provides a compelling explanation of why issuing companies may not be concerned about underpricing in traditional British-style IPO markets. Thirdly, we also find that pre-IPO investors take steps to minimise wealth transfer to new investors either by selling a very small proportion or none of their pre-IPO shares. These findings suggest that explanations of IPO underpricing to the various parties involved in the process should, in part, be sought in the institutional structures and investment banking practices of the relevant primary capital market.     

New Issue Yield Spreads in the 30-Year Treasury Bond Market

This paper investigates the seasoning process of yield spreads between newly issued and seasoned 30-year Treasury bonds. These securities provide a unique data set for analyzing this relationship in that they allow for control of noncoupon differences between securities that were present in previous studies on corporate bonds. The results indicate that, in contrast to the existing literature, there appears to be a price premium for newly issued securities. We attribute this difference primarily to be a function of a higher degree of liquidity inherent to newly issued Treasury bonds.     

Did gold-standard adherence reduce sovereign capital costs?

A commonly cited benefit of the classical gold standard is that it reduced borrowing costs by signaling a country's commitment to financial probity. Using a new dataset, this paper tests whether gold-standard adherence was negatively correlated with the cost of capital. Conditional on UK risk factors, there is no evidence that the bonds issued by countries off gold earned systematically higher excess returns than the bonds issued by countries on gold. This conclusion is robust to allowing betas to differ across exchange-rate regimes; to including other determinants of the country risk premium; and to controlling for the British Empire effect.     

Callable Bonds Revisited

In light of the dramatic changes in the callable bond market, we reexamine the determinants of callable bonds. Using data from 1980-2003, we find that callable bonds are often issued by firms with both information asymmetry and underinvestment problems. However, risk-shifting does not appear to be a major factor. Furthermore, we find that interest rate hedging is an important factor for investment-grade bonds and when interest rates are high but not so for below-investment-grade bonds or when rates are low.     

One-Way Treaty with the World: The U.S. Withholding Tax and the Netherlands Antilles

This paper chronicles the experiences of the U.S. withholding tax on interest income. In 1984, the U.S. repealed its 30 percent withholding tax on interest income paid to foreign persons or corporations. While the tax raised little revenue, it had imposed substantial implicit costs on U.S. corporate borrowers. Since, prior to repeal, domestically issued bonds were subject either to withholding or strict information requirements, many U.S. multinationals raised funds through foreign finance subsidiaries, primarily in the Netherlands Antilles, to avoid the tax. Although the withholding tax rate was effectively reduced to zero in the U.S., this paper demonstrates that interest flows were highly sensitive to their after-tax cost.