Philippe Mueller

Credit Spreads and Real Activity

This paper explores the transmission of credit conditions into the real economy. Specifically, I examine the forecasting power of the term structure of credit spreads for future GDP growth. I find that the whole term structure of credit spreads has predictive power, while the term structure of Treasury yields has none. Using a parsimonious macro-finance term structure model that captures the joint dynamics of GDP, inflation, Treasury yields and credit spreads, I decompose the spreads and identify the drivers of this transmission effect. I show that there is a pure credit component orthogonal to macroeconomic information that accounts for a large part of the forecasting power of credit spreads. The macro factors themselves also contribute to the predictive power, especially for long maturity spreads. Additional factors affecting Treasury yields and credit spreads are irrelevant for predicting future economic activity. The credit factor is highly correlated with the index of tighter loan standards, thus lending support to the existence of a transmission channel from borrowing conditions to the economy. Using data from 2006-2008, I capture the ongoing crisis, during which credit conditions have heavily tightened and I show that the model provides reasonably accurate out-of-sample predictions for this period. As of year-end 2008, the model predicts a contraction of -2% in real GDP growth for 2009, which is lower than comparable survey forecasts.

Short-Run Bond Risk Premia

In the short-run, bond risk premia exhibit pronounced spikes around major economic and financial crises. In contrast, long-term bond risk premia feature cyclical swings. We empirically examine the predictability of the market variance risk premium—a proxy of economic uncertainty—for bond risk premia and we show the strong predictive power for the one month horizon that almost entirely disappears for horizons above one year. The variance risk premium is largely orthogonal to well-established bond return predictors—forward rates, jumps, yield curve factors, and macro variables. We rationalize our empirical findings in an equilibrium model of uncertainty about consumption and inflation which is coupled with recursive preferences. We show that the model can quantitatively explain the levels of bond and variance risk premia as well as the predictive power of the variance risk premium while jointly matching salient features of other asset prices.

Bond Variance Risk Premiums

This paper studies variance risk premiums in the Treasury market. We first develop a theory to price variance swaps and show that the realized variance can be perfectly replicated by a static position in Treasury futures options and a dynamic position in the underlying. Pricing and hedging is robust even if the underlying jumps. Using a large options panel data set on Treasury futures with different tenors, we report the following findings: First, the term structure of implied variances is downward sloping across maturities and increases in tenors. Moreover, the slope of the term structure is strongly linked to economic activity. Second, returns to the Treasury variance swap are negative and economically large. Shorting a variance swap produces an annualized Sharpe ratio of almost two and the associated returns cannot be explained by standard risk factors. Finally, the returns remain highly statistically significant even when accounting for transaction costs and margin requirements.