IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v84y2016icp1-16.html

Government as borrower of first resort

Author

Listed:
  • Chemla, Gilles
  • Hennessy, Christopher A.

Abstract

Optimal government bond supply is examined under asymmetric information and safe asset scarcity. Corporations issue junk debt when demand for safe debt is high since uninformed investors then migrate to risky overheated debt markets. Uninformed demand stimulates informed speculation, driving debt prices toward fundamentals, encouraging pooling at high leverage. As borrower of first resort, government can issue bonds, siphoning off uninformed demand for risky corporate debt, reducing wasteful informed speculation. Government bonds eliminate pooling at high leverage or improve risk sharing in such equilibria. Optimal government bond supply is increasing in demand for safe assets and non-monotonic in marginal Q.

Suggested Citation

  • Chemla, Gilles & Hennessy, Christopher A., 2016. "Government as borrower of first resort," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 1-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:84:y:2016:i:c:p:1-16
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2016.09.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393216300927
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2016.09.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Gorton, Gary & Ordoñez, Guillermo, 2022. "The supply and demand for safe assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 132-147.
    3. Jeremy C. Stein, 2012. "Monetary Policy as Financial Stability Regulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 57-95.
    4. Graham, John R. & Leary, Mark T. & Roberts, Michael R., 2015. "A century of capital structure: The leveraging of corporate America," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(3), pages 658-683.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1998. "Private and Public Supply of Liquidity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 1-40, February.
    6. Robin Greenwood & Samuel Hanson & Jeremy C. Stein, 2010. "A Gap‐Filling Theory of Corporate Debt Maturity Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(3), pages 993-1028, June.
    7. Woodford, Michael, 1990. "Public Debt as Private Liquidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 382-388, May.
    8. Stephen A. Ross, 1977. "The Determination of Financial Structure: The Incentive-Signalling Approach," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(1), pages 23-40, Spring.
    9. Gorton, Gary & Pennacchi, George, 1990. "Financial Intermediaries and Liquidity Creation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 49-71, March.
    10. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    11. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    12. John Graham & Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2014. "How Does Government Borrowing Affect Corporate Financing and Investment?," NBER Working Papers 20581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Robin Greenwood & Samuel G. Hanson, 2013. "Issuer Quality and Corporate Bond Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(6), pages 1483-1525.
    14. Dow, James, 1998. "Arbitrage, Hedging, and Financial Innovation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 739-755.
    15. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Olivier Jeanne, 2012. "Global safe assets," BIS Working Papers 399, Bank for International Settlements.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicos Zafiris, 2017. "The Financing of Investment in Utility Assets," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 197-212, June.

    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. Chemla, Gilles & Hennessy, Christopher, 2016. "Government as Borrower of First Resort," CEPR Discussion Papers 11362, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Golec, Pascal & Perotti, Enrico, 2017. "Safe assets: a review," Working Paper Series 2035, European Central Bank.
    3. Marcin Kacperczyk & Christophe Pérignon & Guillaume Vuillemey, 2021. "The Private Production of Safe Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 495-535, April.
    4. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2022. "Fragility of Safe Asset Markets," Staff Reports 1026, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Dottori, Davide & Manna, Michele, 2016. "Strategy and tactics in public debt management," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-25.
    6. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2023. "Fragility of Safe Assets," Working Papers 23-02, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    7. Kreamer, Jonathan, 2022. "Financial intermediation and the supply of liquidity," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Ricardo J. Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi, 2013. "A Model of the Safe Asset Mechanism (SAM): Safety Traps and Economic Policy," Working Paper 70936, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    9. Itamar Drechsler & Alexi Savov & Philipp Schnabl, 2018. "A Model of Monetary Policy and Risk Premia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(1), pages 317-373, February.
    10. Ricardo J Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi, 2018. "The Safety Trap," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 223-274.
    11. Xiong, Qizhou, 2018. "The liquidity premium of safe assets: The role of government debt supply," IWH Discussion Papers 11/2017, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2018.
    12. Erasmo Giambona & Rafael Matta & Jose‐Luis Peydro & Ye Wang, 2026. "Quantitative Easing, Investment, and Safe Assets: The Corporate Bond–Lending Channel," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 58(2), pages 329-364, March.
    13. Ye Li, 2018. "Fragile New Economy: The Rise of Intangible Capital and Financial Instability," 2018 Meeting Papers 1189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Stefan Arping, 2015. "Banks and Market Liquidity," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-020/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. Demirci, Irem & Huang, Jennifer & Sialm, Clemens, 2019. "Government debt and corporate leverage: International evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 337-356.
    16. Krishnamurthy, Arvind & Vissing-Jorgensen, Annette, 2015. "The impact of Treasury supply on financial sector lending and stability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(3), pages 571-600.
    17. Benedikt Ballensiefen & Angelo Ranaldo, 2023. "Safe Asset Carry Trade," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(2), pages 223-265.
    18. DeAngelo, Harry & Stulz, Rene M., 2013. "Why High Leverage Is Optimal for Banks," Working Paper Series 2013-08, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    19. Grobéty, Mathieu, 2018. "Government debt and growth: The role of liquidity," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-22.
    20. Patricia Gómez-González, 2015. "Financial innovation in sovereign borrowing and public provision of liquidity," Working Papers 1511, Banco de España.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:eee:moneco:v:84:y:2016:i:c:p:1-16. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    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.