IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3879.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Does the Paper-Bill Spread Predict Real Economic Activity?

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin M. Friedman
  • Kenneth N. Kuttner

Abstract

Evidence based on the past three decades of U.S. experience shows that the difference between the interest rates on commercial paper and Treasury bills has consistently borne a systematic relationship to subsequent fluctuations of nonfinancial economic activity. This interest rate spread typically widens in advance of recessions, and narrows again before recoveries. The relationship remains valid even after allowance for other financial variables that previous researchers have often advanced as potential business cycle predictors. This paper provides support for each of three different explanations for this predictive power of the paper?bill spread. First, changing perceptions of default risk exert a clearly recognizable influence on the spread. This influence is all the more discernable after allowance for effects associated with the changing volume of paper issuance when investors view commercial paper and Treasury bills as imperfect portfolio substitutes -- a key assumption for which the evidence introduced here provides support. Second, again under conditions of imperfect substitutability, a widening paper-bill spread is also a symptom of the contraction in bank lending due to tighter monetary policy. Third, there is also evidence of a further role for independent changes in the behavior of borrowers in the commercial paper market due to their changing cash requirements over the course of the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin M. Friedman & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 1991. "Why Does the Paper-Bill Spread Predict Real Economic Activity?," NBER Working Papers 3879, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3879
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3879.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1989. "Does Monetary Policy Matter? A New Test in the Spirit of Friedman and Schwartz," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 121-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ben S. Bernanke & Cara S. Lown, 1991. "The Credit Crunch," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(2), pages 205-248.
    3. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    4. Kashyap, Anil K & Stein, Jeremy C & Wilcox, David W, 1993. "Monetary Policy and Credit Conditions: Evidence from the Composition of External Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 78-98, March.
    5. Ben S. Bernanke, 1990. "On the predictive power of interest rates and interest rate spreads," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 51-68.
    6. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1989. "New Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 351-409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1990. "Implications of Corporate Indebtedness for Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 3266, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1986. "Increasing Indebtedness and Financial Stability in the United States," NBER Working Papers 2072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuttner, Kenneth N. & Friedman, Benjamin Morton, 1998. "Indicator Properties of the Paper—Bill Spread: Lessons from Recent Experience," Scholarly Articles 4554251, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Benjamin M. Friedman & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 1998. "Indicator Properties Of The Paper-Bill Spread: Lessons From Recent Experience," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 34-44, February.
    3. Fernando Barran & Virginie Coudert & Benoît Mojon, 1995. "Taux d'intérêt, spreads, comportement bancaire : les effets sur l'activité réelle," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(3), pages 625-634.
    4. Christina D. Romer & David Romer, 1993. "Credit channel or credit actions? an interpretation of the postwar transmission mechanism," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 71-149.
    5. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    6. Willi Semmler, 2011. "Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-20680-1, January.
    7. Kashyap, Anil K. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1995. "The impact of monetary policy on bank balance sheets," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 151-195, June.
    8. William English & Kostas Tsatsaronis & Edda Zoli, 2005. "Assessing the predictive power of measures of financial conditions for macroeconomic variables," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Investigating the relationship between the financial and real economy, volume 22, pages 228-52, Bank for International Settlements.
    9. Rossiter, R. D., 1995. "Monetary policy indicators after deregulation," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 207-223.
    10. Anil K. Kashyap & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Monetary Policy and Bank Lending," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 221-261, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Fabio ALESSANDRINI, 2003. "Some Additional Evidence from the Credit Channel on the Response to Monetary Shocks: Looking for Asymmetries," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 03.04, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    12. Steven Ongena, 1995. "Monetary policy and credit conditions: new evidence," Macroeconomics 9503001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    14. Sigouin, Christian & Raynauld, Jacques, 1997. "Quel rôle peut-on imputer aux banques à charte canadiennes dans la transmission des chocs monétaires des années quatre-vingt?," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 73(1), pages 367-393, mars-juin.
    15. Repullo, Rafael & Suarez, Javier, 2000. "Entrepreneurial moral hazard and bank monitoring: A model of the credit channel," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 1931-1950, December.
    16. Rhys Bidder & John Krainer & Adam Shapiro, 2021. "De-leveraging or de-risking? How banks cope with loss," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 100-127, January.
    17. Alfred V. Guender, 1998. "Is There a Bank‐Lending Channel of Monetary Policy in New Zealand?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 74(226), pages 243-265, September.
    18. Edward N. Gamber, 1996. "The policy content of the yield curve slope," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(2), pages 163-179.
    19. Honda, Yuzo, 2004. "Bank capital regulations and the transmission mechanism," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 675-688, September.
    20. Yu Hsing & Wen-jen Hsieh, 2014. "Test of the Bank Lending Channel for a BRICS Country," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 4(8), pages 1016-1023, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3879. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.