Corporate debt and unconventional monetary policy: The risk-taking channel with bond and loan contracts

We investigate the effects of unconventional monetary policies on corporate debt through the risk-taking channel using corporate bond and syndicated loan contracts from 2000 to 2016 in Japan. In this period, the policy rate remained fixed near the zero bound. Using the daily changes in the yield curve on monetary policy meeting days, we identify one call rate shock and two unconventional monetary policy shocks that do not affect short-term rates. We find that QE shocks, which move all medium-to-long-term rates, increase the maturity of debt contracts, especially for syndicated loans. In addition, such QE shocks decrease the size of corporate bonds with short maturity. On the other hand, QQE shocks, which raise medium-term rates and lower long-term rates, decrease the size of loans and corporate bonds with longer maturity. These effects imply the existence of the risk-taking channel of unconventional monetary policy: it stimulates investment in longer-maturity assets and decreases investment in assets with lower yields. Our findings show that unconventional policies affect debt contracts even in an extremely low interest rate environment.     

Unconventional monetary policy and stock repurchases: Firm-level evidence from a comparison between the United States and Japan

This paper is the first comparative study examining the determinants of stock repurchases during the period of unconventional monetary policy. By constructing a vast firm-level dataset of the U.S. and Japan and conducting multivariate Tobit and probit analyses, this paper presents evidence that during the period of unconventional monetary policy, in both the U.S. and Japan, firms with more free cash flow and lower borrowing costs are more likely to repurchase stock, firms with higher financial leverage are more likely to abstain from stock repurchases, and firms coordinate dividends and stock repurchases to please shareholders. I also find striking contrasts between the results of U.S. and Japanese firms, and show the importance of financial structure in explaining the contrasting results. From a micro perspective, this paper provides new insight and evidence to support the view that financial structure should be thought of as an important factor determining the effects of unconventional monetary policy.     

Unconventional monetary policy announcements and risk aversion: evidence from the U.S. and European equity markets

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of unconventional monetary policy announcements on risk aversion – as proxied by the variance premium – by using panel data analysis. The objective of this empirical analysis is to investigate the risk-taking channel of monetary policy for the major European and U.S. equity markets by studying the impact that the announcements of an unconventional monetary policy has on market uncertainty and risk perception. By measuring the difference between risk-neutral and realised and conditional variance, we estimate the variance premium, which captures the impact that pricing concerns have on the prices of options. The empirical analysis indicates that easing monetary policies can significantly reduce the variance premium. In addition, we examine the risk premium structure across markets to determine the potential differences in investors’ risk aversion.     

银行间债市收益率上扬的成因及后市展望

自2013年6月以来,利率的上行趋势已从货币市场利率扩散到中长端国债收益率,并蔓延到短端收益率。回归分析结果表明,经济基本面和资金面仅可部分解释国债收益率的上涨。文章进一步分析指出,货币政策维持中性偏紧趋向、金融机构调整资产配置结构削减债券投资额度、银行筹资方式多元化推高资金成本这三大因素,也是引起本轮利率接力上行的显著外力。中长期看,债券市场收益率中枢将随之抬升。在中性偏紧的货币政策基调没有改变前,债券市场将只有阶段性回嗳而无趋势性好转的行情。     

Measuring monetary policy and its impact on the bond market of an emerging economy

In view of multiple instruments used by many central banks in emerging market economies (EMEs), we derive a composite measure of monetary policy for India and assess its impact on the yield curve. Our results show that while monetary policy has the dominant impact among macroeconomic variables on the entire term structure, it is particularly strong at the shorter end and on credit spreads. Shifts in the level of the government yield curve and credit spreads also lead to changes in monetary policy. In terms of robustness, our measure performs better than a narrative-based measure of monetary policy available in the literature.     

International spillover effects of unconventional monetary policies of major central banks

This study examines the effects of unconventional monetary policies (UMPs) by the major central banks, namely the Bank of England (BOE), Bank of Japan (BOJ), European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve (Fed), on the international financial markets, taking global spillovers and monetary policy interaction into account. To this end, we applied the Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) model to 35 countries/economies and one region for the period from March 2009 to July 2019. In addition, we accommodated the smooth transition to the GVAR to consider possible structural changes in the effects of UMPs and monetary policy interaction. Our results indicate the importance of capturing structural changes, showing the remarkable difference between the beginning and end of the sample. For example, we found clear evidence of monetary policy coordination after the global financial crisis and less evidence of policy interaction in the recent period. Also, our results suggest that generally, the UMPs of the major central banks had stronger effects on both domestic and international bond markets in the earlier period. In contrast, the global equity markets responded more positively to the UMPs in the recent period, although there was no noticeable difference in the responses of domestic equity markets throughout the sample.     

2009-2010年债券市场运行分析与展望

2009年,在适度宽松的货币政策和积极财政政策引导下,我国债券市场得以克服国际金融危机负面影响,继续保持稳定运行态势。各类证券发行量稳步增长,二级市场交易量温和放大,指数出现回调,债市与股市互动明显。展望2010年,在通胀预期和货币政策从紧预期影响下,市场利率有望上行,指数震荡幅度加大,商业性证券发行量继续增加,政府债券发行会有所控制。     

The impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on investor sentiment

This paper examines the relationship between monetary policy and investor sentiment across conventional and unconventional monetary policy regimes. During conventional times, we find that a surprise decrease in the fed funds rate leads to a large increase in investor sentiment. Similarly, when the fed funds rate is at its zero lower bound, research results indicate that expansionary unconventional monetary policy shocks also have a large and positive impact on investor mood. Together, our findings highlight the importance of both conventional and unconventional monetary policy in the determination of investor sentiment.     

Dispersion in news sentiment and corporate bond returns

We construct a news sentiment index at the firm level by using textual analysis of news articles and find that dispersion in news sentiment is a significant predictor of corporate bond returns. Bonds of firms with high dispersion in news sentiment have a highly significant average return of 7.38 percent. A portfolio that longs bonds with high dispersion in news sentiments and shorts bonds with low dispersion earns an average biweekly return of 8.53 percent. This finding is in line with an argument that dispersion in news sentiment is a proxy for future cash flow uncertainty.     

Monetary policy with signal extraction from the bond market

Monetary policy is conducted in an environment of uncertainty. This paper presents a model where the central bank uses real time data from the bond market together with standard macroeconomic indicators to infer the current state of the economy more efficiently, while taking into account that its own actions influence the bond market and therefore what it observes. That the central bank uses the information in the term structure to set policy creates a link between the bond market and the macroeconomy that is novel to the literature. The estimated model suggests that there is some information in US yields of maturities of less than 1 year that can help the Federal Reserve to identify shocks to the economy on a timely basis.     

Illiquidity or credit deterioration: A study of liquidity in the US corporate bond market during financial crises

We investigate whether liquidity is an important price factor in the US corporate bond market. In particular, we focus on whether liquidity effects are more pronounced in periods of financial crises, especially for bonds with high credit risk, using a unique data set covering more than 20,000 bonds, between October 2004 and December 2008. We employ a wide range of liquidity measures and find that liquidity effects account for approximately 14% of the explained market-wide corporate yield spread changes. We conclude that the economic impact of the liquidity measures is significantly larger in periods of crisis, and for speculative grade bonds.     

A corporate bond innovation of the 90s: The clawback provision in high-yield debt

This paper examines a recent financial innovation in corporate bond contracts, referred to as the clawback provision. A clawback provision in debt contracts gives the issuer an option to redeem a specified fraction of the bond issue within a specified period at a predetermined price and with funds that must come from a subsequent equity offering. We argue that issuers use clawback provisions to mitigate the wealth losses that would otherwise occur when new equity is offered. Consistent with the hypotheses, the evidence shows that bond offerings are more likely to include a clawback provision if their issuers are private, have more intangible assets, have fewer liquid assets, and are unregulated. We also estimate the price of clawback provisions and find that yield spreads on bonds with clawback provisions are a median of 86 basis points higher relative to what they otherwise would be.     

对中央银行非常规政策退出的几点思考

当前,随着全球经济复苏态势的不断显现,关于非常规货币政策的有序退出也逐步提上了各国央行的议事日程。该文对于非常规货币政策的概念、类别,以及金融危机以来美日欧等主要经济体所采取的非常规政策进行了梳理,在此基础上对于非常规货币政策的效果评价,及非常规货币政策的退出时机、节奏和顺序等战略决策进行了相关探讨和思考。     

Money market microstructure and monetary policy: the Indian experience

Money market microstructure has recently started drawing attention in the empirical literature on financial markets of emerging market economies. In the Indian context, a GARCH(1, 1) model shows that policy instruments impact bid–ask spreads in the money market. Volatility of bid–ask spreads seems to be more persistent in the overnight market than in longer maturity segments. The results also suggest the dominance of policy interventions over the market microstructure across the term structure of the Indian money market. Unanticipated policy actions can delay mean reversion and, therefore, the return to stability.     

On the real estate market efficiency

This reseach reexamines the efficiency hypothesis of the real estate market using monthly data and the vector autoregressive (VAR) modelling technique. The tests focus on the causal linkage between real estate returns and a number of relevant financial and economic variables. An eight-by-eight VAR model is estimated using the FPE and the specific gravity criteria, in conjunction with an extensive series of specification tests. The empirical results distilled from system estimations suggest that the real estate market is efficient with respect to available information on the industrial production, the risk premia, the term structure of interest rates, and the monetary base. Movements in these variables are quickly and fully utilized by market agents, perhaps owing to the intensity with which their relationship with stock returns has been discussed in the literature and the popular media. However, the results also suggest the presence of a significant lagged relationship between real estate returns and fiscal policy moves, even when the paths through other potential determinants of these returns are taken into account. Of course, our finding that the fiscal policy measure is useful in predicting stock returns does not necessarily imply that the real estate market is inefficient. At a minimum, inefficiency is revealed only if a careful analysis of the budgetary process can help design a profitable (exploitable) trading strategy.     

Optimal portfolio choice in the bond market

We consider the Merton problem of optimal portfolio choice when the traded instruments are the set of zero-coupon bonds. Working within a Markovian Heath–Jarrow–Morton model of the interest rate term structure driven by an infinite-dimensional Wiener process, we give sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of an optimal trading strategy. When there is uniqueness, we provide a characterization of the optimal portfolio as a sum of mutual funds. Furthermore, we show that a Gauss–Markov random field model proposed by Kennedy [Math. Financ. 4, 247–258(1994)] can be treated in this framework, and explicitly calculate the optimal portfolio. We show that the optimal portfolio in this case can be identified with the discontinuities of a certain function of the market parameters.     

2008年宏观经济及债券市场前景展望

该文分别从经济增长、资金面以及货币政策三个方面分析了宏观经济的前景,认为通货膨胀会见顶回落、债券市场的资金面和宏观货币政策会转为宽松;文章认为2008年宏观经济的增长将趋缓,但利率的由升转降以及资金面的宽松将使得债券市场得以起飞和发展。     

近期债券市场基本面分析与展望

该文认为,外需放缓导致国内经济增速放缓,年内通货膨胀将呈前高后低走势,1季度将成为通胀高点,加息概率依然较大,短期内债券市场将维持当前的震荡格局,但仍不失资金配置良机,相对而言,长期国债,短期融资券的投资价值较大。     

Monetary policy,bond risk premia,and the economy

Within an affine model of the term structure of interest rates, where bond yields get driven by observable and unobservable macroeconomic factors, parameter restrictions help identify the effects of monetary policy and other structural disturbances on output, inflation, and interest rates and decompose movements in long-term rates into terms attributable to changing expected future short rates versus risk premia. When estimated, the model highlights a broad range of channels through which monetary policy affects risk premia and the economy, risk premia affect monetary policy and the economy, and the economy affects monetary policy and risk premia.     

货币政策对银行间市场流动性影响效应的实证研究及启示

银行间货币市场是央行实施货币政策的重要平台,研究货币政策对银行间市场流动性的影响对于完善商业银行日常流动性管理具有重要意义。文章在设定银行间市场流动性测度指标与梳理货币政策工具对市场流动性的影响机制的基础上,分别使用事件分析法和时间序列模型对不同政策工具的影响效应进行实证分析,得出相关分析结论,并总结其对于完善商业银行日常流动性管理的启示。