Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

 
 
Session Overview
Session
SAT 2-3: Corporate Bonds
Time:
Saturday, 06/Dec/2025:
10:50am - 11:45am


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Presentations

The Risk and Return of Stocks and Bonds

Alex Dickerson1, Mathieu Fournier1, Jan Ericsson2, Piotr Orlowski3

1UNSW business school, Australia; 2Mc Gill University; 3HEC Montreal

We study the joint dynamics of stock and corporate bond returns using a structural credit risk model, where unlevered asset returns and volatility are driven by systematic risk factors. The model captures key time-series features of stock and bond volatilities, leverage, and credit spreads at the market, industry, and firm levels. It produces return forecasts that exceed Martin’s lower bound for equities and exhibit larger spikes in downturns than the average credit spreads for bonds. These forecasts significantly predict realized returns, outperforming benchmarks. We find that systematic variance risk commands a substantially larger premium in corporate bonds relative to equities.