Nonmonetary News in Fed Announcements: Evidence from the Corporate Bond Market
Journal of money credit and banking
Published online on July 28, 2026
Abstract
["Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Volume 58, Issue 5, Page 1359-1383, August 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nWhen the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy, do the prices of riskier assets fall relative to safer assets? Or, do investors interpret policy tightening as a signal that economic fundamentals are stronger than they previously believed, thus leading riskier assets to outperform? We present evidence that the latter of these two forces empirically dominates within the U.S. corporate bond market. Following an unanticipated monetary policy tightening, riskier corporate bonds outperform safer corporate bonds, demonstrating the importance of an informational, or nonmonetary, component within monetary policy announcements.\n"]