Estimating the Term Structure of Credit Spreads on Euro-denominated Corporate Bonds

In this paper, we estimate the term structure of credit spreads on Euro-denominated corporate bonds with a modified version of the Duffee (1999) intensity-based model. The empirical analysis considers monthly observations for a sample of investment-grade euro-denominated corporate bonds analysed for rating classes. The model is estimated with a maximum likelihood - Kalman filter approach over different sample periods ranging from January 1999 to August 2006. The estimation results, in general, support the application of the theoretical model to the euro-denominated bond market and exhibit some interesting characteristics of this relatively recent market.