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Working Paper
An Empirical Analysis of the Cost of Borrowing
We empirically study firm financing costs using a comprehensive dataset of corporate bonds and bank loans. We construct a measure of the cost of financing, the ExcessDebt Premium, which controls for observable debt characteristics. We document two key findings: first, bank loans are about 97 basis points cheaper than corporate bonds when controlling for observable characteristics. Second, there is significant dispersion in borrowing costs, even within the same firm and quarter. The analysis reveals that this within firm variation persists after accounting for instrument type, maturity, ...
Working Paper
When Liquidity Matters: Firm Balance Sheets during Large Crises
We study how aggregate shocks shape the joint dynamics of credit spreads, debt, and liquid asset holdings for nonfinancial firms, focusing on the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. Both episodes saw sharp credit spread increases and investment declines, but debt and liquidity fell during the GFC and rose during COVID-19. Cross-sectionally, leverage drove spreads and investment in the GFC, while liquidity dominated during COVID-19. We build a macro-finance model of firm capital structure with a liquidity motive for working capital. Calibrated to data, it attributes the GFC to real and ...
Working Paper
What Drives the Cross-Section of Credit Spreads?: A Variance Decomposition Approach
I decompose the cross-sectional variation of the credit spreads for corporate bonds into changing expected returns and changing expectation of credit losses with a model-free method. Using a log-linearized pricing identity and a vector autoregression applied to micro-level data from 1973 to 2011, I find that the expected credit loss component and the excess return component each explains about half of the variance of the credit spreads. Unlike the market-level findings in Gilchrist and Zakrajsek (2012), at the firm level, the expected credit loss is volatile and affects the firms' investment ...
Working Paper
Credit and Liquidity Policies during Large Crises
We compare firms’ financials during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. While the two crises featured similar increases in credit spreads, debt and liquid assets decreased during the GFC but increased during COVID-19. In the cross-section, leverage was the primary determinant of credit spreads and investment during the GFC, but liquidity was more important during COVID-19. We augment a quantitative model of firm capital structure with a motive to hold liquid assets. The GFC resembled a combination of real and financial shocks, while COVID-19 also featured liquidity shocks. We ...
Working Paper
Firm Financial Conditions and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
We study how the transmission of monetary policy to firms' investment and credit spreads depends on their financial conditions, finding a major role for their excess bond premia (EBPs), the component of credit spreads in excess of default risk. While monetary policy easing shocks compress credit spreads more for firms with higher ex-ante EBPs, it is lower-EBP firms that invest more. We rationalize these findings using a model with financial frictions in which lower-EBP firms have flatter marginal product of capital curves. We also show empirically that the cross-sectional distribution of firm ...
Working Paper
Credit and Liquidity Policies during Large Crises
We compare firms’ financials during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. While the two crises featured similar increases in credit spreads, debt and liquid assets decreased during the GFC but increased during COVID-19. In the cross-section, leverage was the primary determinant of credit spreads and investment during the GFC, but liquidity was more important during COVID-19. We augment a quantitative model of firm capital structure with a motive to hold liquid assets. The GFC resembled a combination of productivity and financial shocks, while COVID-19 also featured liquidity ...
Working Paper
Decomposing the Monetary Policy Multiplier
Financial markets play an important role in generating monetary policy transmission asymmetries in the US. Credit spreads only adjust to unexpected increases in interest rates, causing output and prices to respond more to a monetary tightening than to an expansion. At a one year horizon, the ‘financial multiplier’ of monetary policy—defined as the ratio between the cumulative responses of employment and credit spreads—is zero for a monetary expansion, -2 for a monetary tightening, and -4 for a monetary tightening that takes place under strained credit market conditions. These results ...
Working Paper
Fintech Lending: Financial Inclusion, Risk Pricing, and Alternative Information
Fintech has been playing an increasing role in shaping financial and banking landscapes. Banks have been concerned about the uneven playing field because fintech lenders are not subject to the same rigorous oversight. There have also been concerns about the use of alternative data sources by fintech lenders and the impact on financial inclusion. In this paper, we explore the advantages/disadvantages of loans made by a large fintech lender and similar loans that were originated through traditional banking channels. Specifically, we use account-level data from the Lending Club and Y-14M bank ...
Working Paper
Credit Surfaces and Economic Uncertainty
The Credit Surface along the leverage dimension gives the bond spread as a function of the loan-to-value ratio. Empirically, we show that uncertainty shocks typically increase spreads and steepen the credit surface, profoundly affecting the supply of credit. Theoretically, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the convexity of the credit surface, and for changes in the anticipated distribution of collateral prices that lead to steepening of the credit surface. Finally, we show that the credit surface itself fully reveals the entire distribution of collateral prices, thus providing ...
Working Paper
Credit and Liquidity Policies during Large Crises
We compare firms’ financials during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. While the two crises featured similar increases in credit spreads, debt and liquid assets decreased during the GFC but increased during COVID-19. In the cross-section, leverage was the primary determinant of credit spreads and investment during the GFC, but liquidity was more important during COVID-19. We augment a quantitative model of firm capital structure with a motive to hold liquid assets. The GFC resembled a combination of real and financial shocks, while COVID-19 also featured liquidity shocks. We ...