A bouquet of new ETFs sprouted this month. Here’s an overview of several of them:

• State Street Global Advisors, the second largest ETF provider, released Thursday the first ETF to offer exposure to the global investment-grade corporate bond market.

SPDR Barclays Capital International Corporate Bond ETF (ARCA:IBND ) tracks the Barclays Capital Global Aggregate ex-USD> $1 Billion: Corporate Bond Index. This marks the eighth foreign bond ETF on the market. The others include only government debt but no corporate debt.

Forty-eight percent of the world’s corporate bond exposure is outside the U.S. says Tom Anderson, head of ETF strategy and research at SSGA. IBND offers exposure to 18 developed countries and five currencies, with an 89% weighting to the euro. Returns will be affected by changes in exchange rates.

Financial firms make up 47% of the holdings’ issuers, industrials 40% and utilities 12%.

The exchange traded fund holds a representative sample of the bonds in the index, with an average yield of 3.05%. Distributions will be paid monthly. It charges investors 0.56% of assets a year to cover expenses.

• Pax World Management, which specializes in socially and environmentally responsible investing, launched its first ETF last week and said it plans to add two more by the end of the month.

The ESG Shares North America Sustainability Index () replicates the FTSE KLD North America Sustainability Index, which includes U.S. and Canadian stocks.

It holds 226 primarily blue chip stocks. Like the S&P 500, it’s most heavily weighted in financials at 21% and technology at 19%.

NASI charges an annual management fee of 0.50% of assets.

It will compete with iShares KLD Select Social Index (ARCA:KLD ) and iShares FTSE KLD 400 Social Index (ARCA:DSI ), which include stocks that KLD Research & Analytics determines have positive environmental, social and governance (ESG) characteristics.

Thinly Traded

Both trade a scant 8,800 to 10,600 shares a day on average and have a wide bid/ask spread of 20 cents, according to Morningstar. Both ETFs outperformed the S&P 500 by about 4% in 2009, but they trail it slightly this year.

Pax World plans to release the ESG Shares FTSE Environmental Technologies (ET50) Index () on Tuesday. It will hold the 50 largest environmental companies globally by full market cap.

It’s floating ESG Shares Europe Asia Pacific Sustainability Index () on Thursday. It will combine Europe- and Asia-Pacific-based companies with superior ESG performance.

• IndexIQ, which specializes in alternative investments, rolled out IQ Taiwan Small Cap (). It includes Taiwan-based companies with at least $150 million in market value that rank in the smallest 15% of the country’s market. Stocks must trade at least $1 million in shares a day and at least 250,000 shares a month.