The impact of stock market volatility on corporate bond credit spreads Original Research Article

There has been a rapid increase in the number of corporate bonds issued in Australia since the middle of 1998. This increase has stimulated interest in characterising the yield curves and the factors that determine changes in these spreads. The focus of this paper is on measuring any impact of stock market volatility on spreads using two different measures. One measure is based on volatility implied from options prices while the other is derived from a conditional heteroscedastic volatility model of changes in a stock market index. It is found that the former has no significant impact on spreads but the latter is both significant and stable over time. This impact is estimated to be negative implying that an increase in volatility cause a decrease in corporate bond spreads.