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Discussion Paper
Dealer Balance Sheets and Corporate Bond Liquidity Provision
Regulatory reforms since the financial crisis have sought to make the financial system safer and severe financial crises less likely. But by limiting the ability of regulated institutions to increase their balance sheet size, reforms?such as the Dodd-Frank Act in the United States and the Basel Committee's Basel III bank regulations internationally?might reduce the total intermediation capacity of the financial system during normal times. Decreases in intermediation capacity may then lead to decreased liquidity in markets in which the regulated institutions intermediate significant trading ...
Report
Dealer balance sheets and bond liquidity provision
Do regulations decrease dealer ability to intermediate trades? Using a unique data set of dealer-bond-level transactions, we link changes in liquidity of individual U.S. corporate bonds to dealers? transaction activity and balance sheet constraints. We show that, prior to the financial crisis, bonds traded by more levered institutions and institutions with investment-bank-like characteristics were more liquid but this relationship reverses after the financial crisis. In addition, institutions that face more regulations after the crisis both reduce their overall volume of trade and have less ...