Monetary policy and corporate bond returns

We investigate the impact of monetary policy shocks on excess corporate bonds returns. We obtain a significant negative response of returns to policy shocks, which is especially strong among low-grading bonds. The largest portion of this response is related to higher expected bond returns (risk premium news), while the impact on expectations of future interest rates (interest rate news) plays a secondary role. However, the interest rate channel is dominant among high-grading bonds and Treasury bonds. Considering the two components of bond premia news, we find that the dominant channel for high-rating (low-rating) bonds is term premia (credit premia) news.