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Working Paper
The magnitude and cyclical behavior of financial market frictions
Zakrajšek, Egon; Natalucci, Fabio M.; Levin, Andrew T. (2004)
We quantify the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the wedge between the cost of external and internal finance by estimating the structural parameters of a canonical debt-contracting model with informational frictions. For this purpose, we construct a new dataset that includes balance sheet information, measures of expected default risk, and credit spreads on publicly traded debt for about 900 U.S. firms over the period 1997Q1 to 2003Q3. Using nonlinear least squares, we obtain precise time-specific estimates of the bankruptcy cost parameter and consistently reject the null ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2004-70

Working Paper
Credit-Market Sentiment and the Business Cycle
López-Salido, J. David; Zakrajšek, Egon; Stein, Jeremy C. (2015-04-25)
Using U.S. data from 1929 to 2015, we show that elevated credit-market sentiment in year t-2 is associated with a decline in economic activity in years t and t+1. Underlying this result is the existence of predictable mean reversion in credit-market conditions. When credit risk is aggressively priced, spreads subsequently widen. The timing of this widening is, in turn, closely tied to the onset of a contraction in economic activity. Exploring the mechanism, we find that buoyant credit-market sentiment in year t-2 also forecasts a change in the composition of external finance: Net debt ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2015-28

Working Paper
The Fed Takes On Corporate Credit Risk: An Analysis of the Efficacy of the SMCCF
Wei, Bin; Gilchrist, Simon; Yue, Vivian Z.; Zakrajšek, Egon (2024-03-01)
This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, a program designed to stabilize the U.S. corporate bond market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program announcements on March 23 and April 9, 2020, significantly reduced investment-grade credit spreads across the maturity spectrum—irrespective of the program’s maturity-eligibility criterion—and ultimately restored the normal upward-sloping term structure of credit spreads. The Federal Reserve’s actual purchases reduced credit spreads of eligible bonds 3 basis points more than those of ineligible ...
Working Papers , Paper 24-2

Discussion Paper
Recession Risk and the Excess Bond Premium
Favara, Giovanni; Gilchrist, Simon; Lewis, Kurt F.; Zakrajšek, Egon (2016-04-08)
In this FEDS Note, we evaluate the information content for recession risk of a component of credit spreads that is not directly attributable to expected default risk and thus to news about future cash flows.
FEDS Notes , Paper 2016-04-08

Working Paper
Inventory dynamics and business cycles: what has changed?
Zakrajšek, Egon; McCarthy, Jonathan (2003)
Despite the recent patch of sluggish growth, the U.S. economy has experienced a period of remarkable stability since the mid-1980s. One popular explanation attributes the diminished variability of economic activity to information-technology-led improvements in inventory management. Our results, however, indicate that the changes in inventory dynamics since the mid-1980s played a reinforcing---rather than a leading---role in the volatility reduction. Movements in the volatility of manufacturing output over the past three decades almost entirely reflect changes in the variability of the growth ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2003-26

Journal Article
Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 2000
Bassett, William F.; Zakrajšek, Egon (2001-06)
The profitability of the U.S. commercial banking industry remained robust in 2000, but returns on equity and on commercial bank assets fell back somewhat from the peak reached in 1999. The falloff reflected a continuation of the decline in net interest margin that dates from the extraordinarily high levels of the early 1990s, a significant increase in loan-loss provisions, and a notable slowing in noninterest income growth. The expansion of bank balance sheets was much stronger in 2000 than in the preceding year, as growth of both loans and securities accelerated. The pickup in loan growth ...
Federal Reserve Bulletin , Volume 87 , Issue Jun

Working Paper
Factor supplies and specialization in the world economy
Zakrajšek, Egon; Harrigan, James (2000)
A core prediction of the Heckscher-Ohlin theory is that countries specialize in goods in which they have a comparative advantage, and that the source of comparative advantage is differences in relative factor supplies. To examine this theory, we use the most extensive dataset available and document the pattern of industrial specialization and factor endowment differences in a broad sample of rich and developing countries over a lengthy period (1970-92). Next, we develop an empirical model of specialization based on factor endowments, allowing for unmeasurable technological differences and ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2000-43

Working Paper
Misallocation and financial market frictions: some direct evidence from the dispersion in borrowing costs
Gilchrist, Simon; Zakrajšek, Egon; Sim, Jae W. (2012)
Financial market frictions distort the allocation of resources among productive units?all else equal, firms whose financing choices are affected by financial frictions face higher borrowing costs than firms with ready access to capital markets. As a result, input choices may differ systematically across firms in ways that are unrelated to their productive efficiency. We propose a simple accounting framework that allows us to assess the empirical magnitude of the loss in aggregate resources due to such misallocation. To a second-order approximation, our accounting framework requires only ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2012-08

Working Paper
Interest rate risk and bank equity valuations
Zakrajšek, Egon; Heuvel, Skander J. van den; English, William B. (2012)
Because they engage in maturity transformation, a steepening of the yield curve should, all else equal, boost bank profitability. We re-examine this conventional wisdom by estimating the reaction of bank intraday stock returns to exogenous fluctuations in interest rates induced by monetary policy announcements. We construct a new measure of the mismatch between the repricing time or maturity of bank assets and liabilities and analyze how the reaction of stock returns varies with the size of this mismatch and other bank characteristics, including the usage of interest rate derivatives. Our ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2012-26

Working Paper
Capital requirements, business loans, and business cycles: an empirical analysis of the standardized approach in the new Basel Capital Accord
Zakrajšek, Egon; Carpenter, Seth B.; Whitesell, William C. (2001)
In the current regulatory framework, capital requirements are based on risk-weighted assets, but all business loans carry a uniform risk weight, irrespective of variations in credit risk. The proposed new Capital Accord of the Bank for International Settlements provides for a greater sensitivity of capital requirements to credit risk, raising the question of whether, and to what extent, the new capital standards will intensify business cycles. In this paper, we evaluate the potential cyclical effects of the "standardized approach" to risk evaluation in the new Accord, which involves the ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2001-48

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