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Working Paper
Corporate Debt Maturity Matters for Monetary Policy
We provide novel empirical evidence that firms’ investment is more responsive to monetary policy when a higher fraction of their debt matures. In a heterogeneous firm New Keynesian model with financial frictions and endogenous debt maturity, two channels explain this finding: (1.) Firms with more maturing debt have larger roll-over needs and are therefore more exposed to fluctuations in the real interest rate (roll-over risk). (2.) These firms also have higher default risk and therefore react more strongly to changes in the real burden of outstanding nominal debt (debt overhang). ...
Working Paper
Debt Flexibility
This paper documents new facts on the modification of bank loans using FR Y-14Q regulatory data on C&I loans. We find that loan-level modifications of key contractual terms, such as interest and maturity, occur at least once for 41% of loans. Cross sectional differences in modifications are substantial and amplified by borrower distress. Relative to single-lender loans, syndicated loans are 1.5 times more likely to be modified and interest rate changes are twice as likely. Our findings call into question whether 1) creditor dispersion makes loan modifications more challenging and 2) ...
Working Paper
Corporate stress and bank nonperforming loans: Evidence from Pakistan
Using detailed administrative Pakistani credit registry data, we show that banks with low leverage ratios are both significantly slower and less likely to recognize a loan as nonperforming than other banks that lend to the same firm. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence that this lack of recognition impedes loan curing, with banks with low leverage ratios reporting significantly higher final default rates than other banks for the same borrower (even after controlling for differences in loan terms). Our empirical findings are consistent with the theoretical prediction that classifying a ...
Working Paper
Searching for Yield Abroad : Risk-Taking Through Foreign Investment in U.S. Bonds
The risk-taking effects of low interest rates, now prevailing in many advanced countries, "search-for-yield," can be hard to analyze due to both a paucity of data and challenges in identification. Unique, security-level data on portfolio investment into the United States allow us to overcome both problems. Analyzing holdings of investors from 36 countries in close to 15,000 unique U.S. corporate bonds between 2003 and 2016, we show that declining home-country interest rates lead investors to shift their portfolios toward riskier U.S. corporate bonds, consistent with "search-for-yield". We ...