Search Results
Working Paper
Country spreads and emerging countries
A number of studies have stressed the role of movements in U.S. interest rates and country spreads in driving business cycles in emerging market economies. At the same time, country spreads have been found to respond to changes in both the U.S. interest rate and domestic conditions in emerging markets. These intricate interrelationships leave open a number of fundamental questions: Do country spreads drive business cycles in emerging countries or vice versa, or both? Do U.S. interest rates affect emerging countries directly or primarily through their effect on country spreads? This paper ...
Working Paper
The Fed Takes On Corporate Credit Risk: An Analysis of the Efficacy of the SMCCF
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 ...
Journal Article
Transmission of Sovereign Risk to Bank Lending
Banks hold a significant exposure to their own sovereigns. An increase in sovereign risk may hurt banks' balance sheets, causing a decrease in lending and a decline in economic activity. We quantify the transmission of sovereign risk to bank lending and provide new evidence about the effect of sovereign risk on economic outcomes. We consider the 1999 Marmara earthquake in Turkey as an exogenous shock leading to an increase in Turkey's default risk. Our empirical estimates show that, for banks holding a higher amount of government securities, the exogenous change in sovereign default risk ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Risk and Bank Lending: Theory and Evidence from a Natural Disaster
We quantify the sovereign-bank doom loop by using the 1999 Marmara earthquake as an exogenousshock leading to an increase in Turkey’s default risk. Our theoretical model illustrates that for banks withhigher exposure to government securities, a higher sovereign default risk implies lower net worth andtightening financial constraint. Our empirical estimates confirm the model’s predictions, showing that theexogenous change in sovereign default risk tightens banks’ financial constraints significantly for banks thathold a higher amount of government securities. The resulting tighter bank ...
Working Paper
Interest rate swaps and corporate default
This paper studies firms' usage of interest rate swaps to manage risk in a model economy driven by aggregate productivity shocks, inflation shocks, and counter-cyclical idiosyncratic productivity risk. Consistent with empirical evidence, firms in the model are fixed-rate payers, and swap positions are negatively correlated with the term spread. In the model, swaps affect firms' investment decisions and debt pricing very moderately, and the availability of swaps generates only small economic gains for the typical firm.
Working Paper
A model of the Twin Ds: optimal default and devaluation
This paper characterizes jointly optimal default and exchange-rate policy in a small open economy with limited enforcement of debt contracts and downward nominal wage rigidity. Under optimal policy, default occurs during contractions and is accompanied by large devaluations. The latter inflate away real wages, thereby avoiding massive unemployment. Thus, the Twin Ds phenomenon emerges endogenously as the optimal outcome. In contrast, under fixed exchange rates, optimal default takes place in the context of large involuntary unemployment. Fixed-exchange-rate economies are shown to have ...
Working Paper
Export dynamics in large devaluations
We study the source and consequences of sluggish export dynamics in emerging markets following large devaluations. We document two main features of exports that are puzzling for standard trade models. First, given the change in relative prices, exports tend to grow gradually following a devaluation. Second, high interest rates tend to suppress exports. To address these features of export dynamics, we embed a model of endogenous export participation due to sunk and per period export costs into an otherwise standard small open economy. In response to shocks to productivity, the interest rate, ...
Working Paper
Export dynamics in large devaluations
We study the source and consequences of sluggish export dynamics in emerging markets following large devaluations. We document two main features of exports that are puzzling for standard trade models. First, given the change in relative prices, exports tend to grow gradually following a devaluation. Second, high interest rates tend to suppress exports. To address these features of export dynamics, we embed a model of endogenous export participation due to sunk and per period export costs into an otherwise standard small open economy. In response to shocks to productivity, the interest rate, ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Risk and Financial Risk
In this paper, we study the interplay between sovereign risk and global financial risk. We show that a substantial portion of the comovement among sovereign spreads is accounted for by changes in global financial risk. We construct bond-level sovereign spreads for dollar-denominated bonds issued by more than 50 countries from 1995 to 2020 and use various indicators to measure global financial risk. Through panel regressions and local projection analysis, we find that an increase in global financial risk causes a large and persistent widening of sovereign bond spreads. These effects are ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Risk and Financial Risk
In this paper, we study the interplay between sovereign risk and global financial risk. We show that a substantial portion of the comovement among sovereign spreads is accounted for by changes in global financial risk. We construct bond-level sovereign spreads for dollar-denominated bonds issued by more than 50 countries from 1995 to 2020 and use various indicators to measure global financial risk. Through panel regressions and local projection analysis, we find that an increase in global financial risk causes a large and persistent widening of sovereign bond spreads. These effects are ...