The WRDS Corporate Bond Database, introduced in April 2017, offers a clean and publicly accessible dataset for corporate bond research. In this article, we construct and replicate the Bai, Bali, and Wen (2019, BBW) factors using the WRDS bond returns with the SAS codes in the appendix. Using the...

We propose a comprehensive measure of systematic risk for corporate bonds as a nonlinear function of robust risk factors and find a significantly positive link between systematic risk and the time-series and cross-section of future bond returns. We also find a positive but insignificant relation...

We examine the role of macroeconomic uncertainty in the cross-section of corporate bonds and find a significant uncertainty premium for both investment-grade (0.40% per month) and non-investment-grade (0.81% per month) bonds. The economic uncertainty premium declines as we progressively remove...

We provide time-series and cross-sectional evidence on the significance of a risk-return tradeoff in the bond and equity markets. We find a significantly positive intertemporal relation between expected return and risk in the bond market. We also propose novel measures of systematic and...

We investigate whether the distributional characteristics of corporate bonds predict the cross-sectional differences in future bond returns. The results indicate a significantly positive (negative) link between volatility (skewness) and expected returns, whereas kurtosis does not make a robust...

We provide a comprehensive study on the cross-sectional predictability of corporate bond returns using big data and machine learning. We examine whether a large set of equity and bond characteristics drive the expected returns on corporate bonds. Using either set of characteristics, we find that...