Rotterdam Brown Bag Seminars in Finance

Speaker(s)
Laurens Swinkels (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
Date
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Location
Rotterdam

We investigate correlation dynamics and diversification properties of US dollar-denominated debt issued by governments of the next generation of emerging markets, so-called frontier markets. Our analysis is performed on the aggregate, regional, and country level, with a sample covering 29 countries over the period 2001–2013. We show that the correlation between the returns of frontier government bond markets and US government bonds is time-varying, with prolonged periods of negative correlation, but on average close to zero. Correlations with US investment grade corporate bonds, US corporate high yield bonds, and US dollar-denominated debt issued by governments of emerging markets are substantially higher. Our mean-variance spanning tests suggest that US investors who invest in US government bonds can expand the mean-variance frontier significantly by including frontier government bond markets, but this is not the case for investors who already invest in US corporate high yield bonds or US dollar-denominated emerging markets debt.