Asset Elasticities and Currency Risk Transfer

We use administrative security-level data from the U.S. and Euro Area (EA) portfolios to estimate asset demand and supply elasticities by exploiting exogenous variation in bond-specific currency wedges. Employing a Bartik-style shift-share identification approach, we document extensive heterogeneity in investor demand responsiveness to exogenous changes in the price of currency risk, conditional on the issuer characteristics. Demand for AE-bonds is always inelastic, whereas for EM-bonds, elasticity depends on investor type and currency: insurance/pension, nonbanks and banks have finite-elastic demand for EM-bonds that are issued in their own (investor) currency. For EM-issuer-currency bonds, only EA non-bank investors increase the share of these bonds in their portfolio when currency wedges widen, suggesting they accept higher currency risk for higher returns. In response, issuers adjust their supply endogenously: an exogenous increase of 8 basis point in currency wedges leads to a 0.26% decline in local currency bond issuance relative to GDP. We develop a theoretical framework where debt issuance decisions take into account heterogenous demand of investors in terms of their response to changes in the price of currency risk.