The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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What Drives the Cross‐Section of Credit Spreads?: A Variance Decomposition Approach
Published: 05/23/2017 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12524
YOSHIO NOZAWA
I decompose the variation of credit spreads for corporate bonds into changing expected returns and changing expectation of credit losses. Using a log‐linearized pricing identity and a vector autoregression applied to microlevel data from 1973 to 2011, I find that expected returns contribute to the cross‐sectional variance of credit spreads nearly as much as expected credit loss does. However, most of the time‐series variation in credit spreads for the market portfolio corresponds to risk premiums.
Liquidity Supply in the Corporate Bond Market
Published: 11/10/2020 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12991
JONATHAN GOLDBERG, YOSHIO NOZAWA
This paper examines dealer inventory capacity, or liquidity supply, as a driver of liquidity and expected returns in the corporate bond market. We identify shocks to aggregate liquidity supply using data on corporate bond yields and dealer positions. Liquidity supply shocks lead to persistent changes in market liquidity, are correlated with proxies for dealer financial constraints, and have significant explanatory power for cross‐sectional and time‐series variation in expected returns, beyond standard risk factors. Our findings point to liquidity supply by financially constrained intermediaries as a main driver of market liquidity and asset prices.
Over‐the‐Counter Markets for Nonstandardized Assets
Published: 08/26/2025 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13483
YOSHIO NOZAWA, ANTON TSOY
We study a search and bargaining model of over‐the‐counter markets for nonstandardized assets of heterogeneous quality. Once matched, investors privately learn their values positively correlated with asset quality. Bargaining results in delay that is hump‐shaped in quality and U‐shaped in asset turnover. We document these patterns in commercial real estate and corporate bonds markets. Extreme qualities are little affected by changes in asset standardization, while intermediate qualities are more susceptible. For nonstandardized assets, opacity ensures active trading of all assets, which explains why their trading is decentralized and suggests that trade centralization should come with greater standardization.
The Global Credit Spread Puzzle
Published: 12/20/2024 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13409
JING‐ZHI HUANG, YOSHIO NOZAWA, ZHAN SHI
We examine the ability of structural models to predict credit spreads using global default data and security‐level credit spread data in eight developed economies. We find that two representative, pure default‐risk models tend to underpredict the average credit spreads on investment‐grade (IG) bonds, especially their spreads over government bonds, thereby providing evidence for a “global credit spread puzzle.” However, a model incorporating endogenous liquidity in the secondary debt market helps mitigate the puzzle. Furthermore, the model captures certain determinants of corporate bond market frictions across the eight economies and substantially improves the cross‐sectional fit of individual IG credit spreads.