Search Results
Working Paper
Zombie Lending to U.S. Firms
We show that U.S. banks do not engage in zombie lending to firms of deteriorating profitability, irrespective of capital levels and exposure to such firms. In contrast, unregulated financial intermediaries do, originating more and cheaper loans to these firms. We establish these results using supervisory data on firm-bank relationships, syndicated lending data for banks and nonbanks, and an empirical setting with quasi-random shocks to firm profitability. Although credit migrates from banks to nonbanks, zombie firms file for bankruptcy at an elevated rate, suggesting that nonbanks’ zombie ...
Working Paper
Is bank debt special for the transmission of monetary policy? Evidence from the stock market
We combine existing balance sheet and stock market data with two new datasets to study whether, how much, and why bank lending to firms matters for the transmission of monetary policy. The first new dataset enables us to quantify the bank dependence of firms precisely, as the ratio of bank debt to total assets. We show that a two standard deviation increase in the bank dependence of a firm makes its stock price about 25 percent more responsive to monetary policy shocks. We explore the channels through which this effect occurs, and find that the stock prices of bank-dependent firms that borrow ...
Conference Paper
Financial innovation, macroeconomic stability and systemic crises
Working Paper
Monetary Policy under Multiple Financing Constraints
We revisit the credit channel of monetary policy when firms face multiple financing constraints. Our theory shows that the multiplicity of constraints dampens the transmission of expansionary policy to firm borrowing and investment notably but amplifies the transmission of policy tightening. This asymmetry arises because, when policy tightens (eases), the most (least) responsive constraint binds. Using U.S. firm-level data and exploiting a quasi-natural experiment, we find strong support for these predictions. Embedding the mechanism into a New Keynesian framework, we find that the drop in ...
Working Paper
Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation
The widespread emergence of intangible technologies in recent decades may have significantly hurt output growth--even when these technologies replaced considerably less productive tangible technologies--because of structurally low interest rates caused by demographic forces. This insight is obtained in a model in which intangible capital cannot attract external finance, firms are credit constrained, and there is substantial dispersion in productivity. In a tangibles-intense economy with highly leveraged firms, low rates enable more borrowing and faster debt repayment, reduce misallocation, ...
Working Paper
The Transmission of Monetary Policy through Bank Lending : The Floating Rate Channel
We describe and test a mechanism through which outstanding bank loans affect the firm balance sheet channel of monetary policy transmission. Unlike other debt, most bank loans have floating rates mechanically tied to monetary policy rates. Hence, monetary policy-induced changes to floating rates affect the liquidity, balance sheet strength, and investment of financially constrained firms that use bank debt. We show that firms---especially financially constrained firms---with more unhedged bank debt display stronger sensitivity of their stock price, cash holdings, sales, inventory, and fixed ...
Working Paper
Sticky Leverage: Comment
We revisit the role of long-term nominal corporate debt for the transmission of inflation shocks in the general equilibrium model of Gomes, Jermann, and Schmid (2016, henceforth GJS). We show that inaccuracies in the model solution and calibration strategy lead GJS to a model equilibrium in which nominal long-term debt is systematically mispriced. As a result, the quantitative importance of corporate leverage in the transmission of inflation shocks to real activity in their framework is 6 times larger than what arises under the rational expectations equilibrium.
Discussion Paper
The Potential Increase in Corporate Debt Interest Rate Payments from Changes in the Federal Funds Rate
This note studies the response of interest expenses of U.S. nonfinancial corporations to an increase in interest rates.
Discussion Paper
The Information in Interest Coverage Ratios of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Sector
Using firm-level data, we find significant variability in interest coverage ratios--across firms and economic sectors and across time--that suggests that critical ICR levels depend on firm- or sector-specific economic conditions.
Discussion Paper
Interest Coverage Ratios: Assessing Vulnerabilities in Nonfinancial Corporate Credit
This note examines whether the ability of nonfinancial corporations to meet their interest expenses out of earnings is a vulnerability for financial stability under current economic conditions. We measure this ability using the interest coverage ratio (ICR)—the ratio of earnings before interest and taxes relative to interest expenses—and project this ratio under different scenarios.