Common Factors in the Performance of Corporate Bonds – Evidence Before and After Financial Crisis

We examine monthly excess returns for 23 Euro-denominated corporate bond indices and propose a new specification for bond asset pricing models. Specifically, we separate level and slope components of term and default risk factors and examine liquidity risk. Our results sug-gest that level and slope risk factors, derived from complete interest rate and default spread term structures, significantly improve the explanatory power of the Fama and French (1993) 2-factor model. We also demonstrate different sensitivities of risk factors before and after recent financial crisis. The results are robust to calendar seasonality and the consideration of equity market returns.