Sovereign risk premia and global macroeconomic conditions

Abstract

We study how shifting global macroeconomic conditions affect sovereign bond prices. Bondholders earn premia for two sources of systematic risk: exposure to low-frequency changes in the state of the economy, as captured by expected macroeconomic growth and volatility, and exposure to higher-frequency macroeconomic shocks. Our model predicts that the first source, labeled long-run macro risk, is the primary driver of the level and the cross-sectional variation in sovereign bond premia. We find support for this prediction using sovereign bond return data for 43 countries over the 1994–2018 period. A long-short portfolio based on long-run macro risk earns 8.11% per year in our sample.