Corporate bond returns in the major developed economies increase with risk, as measured by maturity and ratings. From a pricing perspective, we find little to no evidence against the World CAPM model, where the market consists out of equity, sovereign and corporate bonds. However, from a factor...

In a sample of 110 countries over the period 1960–2009, we document a positive relation between the volatility and skewness of growth in the cross-section. This novel stylized fact is related to two distinct mechanisms: sudden growth spurts in emerging markets, and sharp financial...

Corporate bond returns in major developed economies increase with lower ratings and higher residual maturity. The performance of various factor models featuring corporate, sovereign and equity markets as factors suggests that the corporate bond factor plays a dominant role in explaining the...

In a sample of 110 countries over the period 1960-2009, we document a positive relation between the volatility and skewness of growth in the cross-section. This novel stylized fact is related to two distinct mechanisms: sudden growth spurts in emerging markets, and sharp financial crises-driven...

We study the economic sources of stock-bond return comovement and its time variation using a dynamic factor model. We identify the economic factors employing structural and non-structural vector autoregressive models for economic state variables such as interest rates, (expected) inflation,...

Despite a large and growing theoretical literature on flights to safety, there does not appear to exist an empirical characterization of flight-to-safety (FTS) episodes. Using only data on bond and stock returns, we identify and characterize flight to safety episodes for 23 countries. On...

We examine the ability of existing and new factor models to explain the comovements of G10-currency changes, measured using “currency baskets.” A clustering technique reveals a clear two-block structure in currency comovements with the first block containing mostly the dollar currencies, and...

Innovations in volatility constitute a potentially important asset pricing risk factor that can be tested using the return on variance swaps. We characterize the exposures of returns on equities, bonds and currencies in all regions of the world to U.S. based equity variance risk. We explore...

We decompose 5 year nominal bond yields into real and inflation components in an international context using inflation-linked and nominal bonds. Real rate variation dominates the variation in inflation-linked and nominal yields, but liquidity and inflation risk premiums are also important....

Since the global financial crisis, there has been renewed interest in understanding how monetary policy shocks transmit across countries through risk variables, spurring a literature on the "global financial cycle." This paper studies how (conventional and unconventional) monetary policy shocks...