Corporate Loan Spreads and Economic Activity∗ Anthony Saunders Alessandro Spina Stern School of Business, New York University Copenhagen Business School Daniel Streitz Sascha Steffen Copenhagen Business School Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Danish Finance Institute May 17, 2021 Abstract We use secondary corporate loan market prices to construct a novel loan market-based credit spread. This measure has additional predictive power across macroeconomic outcomes beyond existing bond credit spreads as well as other commonly used predic- tors in both the U.S. and Europe. Consistent with theoretical predictions, our evidence highlights the joint role of financial intermediary and borrower balance sheet frictions. In particular, loan market borrowers are compositionally different from bond mar- ket borrowers, which helps explain the differential predictive power of loan over bond spreads. Exploiting industry specific loan spreads and alternative weighting schemes further improves our business cycle forecasts. JEL classification: E23, E44, G20 Keywords: Credit spreads, Secondary loan market, Bonds, Credit supply, Business cycle ∗Corresponding author: Sascha Steffen, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Adickesallee 32-34. 60322 Frankfurt, Germany. E-mail: s.steff
[email protected]. We thank Klaus Adam, Ed Altman, Yakov Amihud, Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Tobias Berg, Nina Boyarchenko, Jennifer Carpenter, Itay Goldstein, Arpit Gupta, Kose John, Toomas Laaritz, Yuearan Ma, Atif Mian, Emanuel Moench, Holger Mueller, Martin Oehmke, Cecilia Palatore, Carolin