Investor Composition and the Liquidity Component in the U.S. Corporate Bond Market

ABSTRACT The link between corporate bond credit spreads and secondary market illiquidity in the cross section has grown stronger since 2005, resulting in a higher liquidity component in credit spreads. Using U.S. investor holdings data, we show that short‐term investors (e.g., mutual funds/exchange‐traded funds [ETFs]) increase trading activities in the secondary market, amplifying the effect of secondary market frictions on prices. We provide a model featuring heterogeneous investors with different trading needs and heterogeneous bonds to investigate the impact of the rapid‐growing mutual fund/ETF sector on the corporate bond market. We find the change in investor composition can quantitatively explain the aggregate trend.