Background and aims: <span style="color: #221e1f; font-family: Optima LT St...

In the standard bond-pricing framework (e.g., Merton [1974]), the return function of holders of risky corporate debt is a concave function of the firm’s stochastic return, implying that a mean-preserving spread is associated with an increase in the bond risk premium. This feature of the standard debt contract has two important implications for the relationship between uncertainty and investment...

Theory predicts that the quality of a firm’s information disclosure can affect the term structure of its corporate bond yield spreads. Using cross-sectional regression and NelsonSiegel yield curve estimation, I find that firms with higher Association for Investment Management and Research disclosure rankings tend to have lower credit spreads. Moreover, this transparency spread is especially lar...

In the standard bond-pricing framework (e.g., Merton [1974]), the return function of holders of risky corporate debt is a concave function of the firm’s stochastic return, implying that a mean-preserving spread is associated with an increase in the bond risk premium. This feature of the standard debt contract has two important implications for the relationship between uncertainty and investment...

Many international and national authorities recommend that cardiovascular risk assessment using multivariate risk scores be used to identify individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This approach is likely to assure that resources in developing countries are allocated to those who need it most. However, not many developing countries have implemented this approach and different ...

In this paper we show that temperature is an aggregate risk factor that adversely affects economic growth. Our argument is based on evidence from global capital markets which shows that the covariance between country equity returns and temperature (i.e., temperature betas) contains sharp information about the cross-country risk premium; countries closer to the Equator carry a positive temperatu...

This paper investigates the significance of volatility, skewness, kurtosis, and downside risk in predicting the cross-sectional variation in future returns on corporate bonds. The results indicate a significantly positive (negative) link between volatility (skewness) and expected returns, whereas kurtosis does not have a robust incremental contribution to the predictability of bond returns. Bon...

The objective of this study was to assess whether living in proximity to a roofing fiber cement factory in southern Thailand was associated with physical, mental, social, and spiritual health domains measured in a self-reported health risk assessment (HRA) questionnaire. A cross-sectional study was conducted among community members divided into two groups: near population (living within 0-2km o...

Cross-sectional evidence suggests associations between sleep duration and levels of the inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein and interleukin-6. This longitudinal study uses data from the London-based Whitehall II study to examine whether changes in sleep duration are associated with average levels of inflammation from 2 measures 5 years apart. Sleep duration (≤5, 6, 7, 8, ≥9 hours on an ave...

We show that decomposing macroeconomic risks across horizon is key to uncover a tight link between risk premia and the real economy. Exposure in four-year returns to innovations in macroeconomic growth and volatility with a matching half-life of over four years is priced in a wide variety of test assets. Shorter-term risks are not priced. Importantly, we show that long-term growth and volatilit...