IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vil/papers/27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The credit channel is alive at the zero lower bound but how does it operate? Firm level evidence on the asymmetric effects of U.S. monetary policy

Author

Abstract

We calculate borrowing spreads for over 8,000 U.S. firms and investigate how these are related to the stance of monetary policy. After 2009, we observe, consistent with credit channel theory, a positive relationship between shadow federal funds rates and borrowing spreads for only firms with high borrowing spreads and low quality. Conversely, we find a negative relationship for firms (of high and low quality) with low borrowing spreads. These relationships are reversed for the period before 2008. Our results uncover the distortional effects of monetary policy. Loose monetary policy causes spreads to converge (diverge) across firms after 2009 (before 2008).

Suggested Citation

  • Uluc Aysun & Kiyoung Jeon & Zeynep Yom, 2016. "The credit channel is alive at the zero lower bound but how does it operate? Firm level evidence on the asymmetric effects of U.S. monetary policy," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 27, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:vil:papers:27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.library.villanova.edu/workingpapers/VSBEcon27.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    2. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    3. Marco J. Lombardi & Feng Zhu, 2018. "A Shadow Policy Rate to Calibrate U.S. Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(5), pages 305-346, December.
    4. Gilchrist, Simon & Himmelberg, Charles P., 1995. "Evidence on the role of cash flow for investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 541-572, December.
    5. Simon Gilchrist & David López-Salido & Egon Zakrajšek, 2015. "Monetary Policy and Real Borrowing Costs at the Zero Lower Bound," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-109, January.
    6. Ricardo J. Caballero & Takeo Hoshi & Anil K. Kashyap, 2008. "Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1943-1977, December.
    7. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Campello, Murillo, 2007. "Firm balance sheets and monetary policy transmission," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1515-1528, September.
    8. Mariassunta Giannetti & Andrei Simonov, 2013. "On the Real Effects of Bank Bailouts: Micro Evidence from Japan," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 135-167, January.
    9. Shin‐ichi Fukuda & Jun‐ichi Nakamura, 2011. "Why Did ‘Zombie’ Firms Recover in Japan?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34, pages 1124-1137, July.
    10. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1996. "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-15, February.
    11. Matteo Ciccarelli & Angela Maddaloni & José-Luis Peydró, 2013. "Heterogeneous transmission mechanism: monetary policy and financial fragility in the eurozone [Which financial frictions? Parsing the evidence from the financial crisis of 2007-9]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 28(75), pages 459-512.
    12. Philip E. Strahan, 1999. "Borrower risk and the price and nonprice terms of bank loans," Staff Reports 90, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    13. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2011. "The Effects of Quantitative Easing on Interest Rates: Channels and Implications for Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(2 (Fall)), pages 215-287.
    14. Ciccarelli, Matteo & Maddaloni, Angela & Peydró, José-Luis, 2013. "Heterogeneous transmission mechanism: monetary policy and financial fragility in the euro area," Working Paper Series 1527, European Central Bank.
    15. Black, Fischer, 1995. "Interest Rates as Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1371-1376, December.
    16. Murillo Campello & Chen Lin & Yue Ma & Hong Zou, 2011. "The Real and Financial Implications of Corporate Hedging," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(5), pages 1615-1647, October.
    17. Simon Gilchrist & Charles Himmelberg, 1999. "Investment: Fundamentals and Finance," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, volume 13, pages 223-274, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. D’Amico, Stefania & King, Thomas B., 2013. "Flow and stock effects of large-scale treasury purchases: Evidence on the importance of local supply," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 425-448.
    19. Hubbard, R Glenn & Kuttner, Kenneth N & Palia, Darius N, 2002. "Are There Bank Effects in Borrowers' Costs of Funds? Evidence from a Matched Sample of Borrowers and Banks," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 559-581, October.
    20. Anil K Kashyap & Owen A. Lamont & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Credit Conditions and the Cyclical Behavior of Inventories," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 565-592.
    21. Aysun, Uluc & Hepp, Ralf, 2013. "Identifying the balance sheet and the lending channels of monetary transmission: A loan-level analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2812-2822.
    22. Buch, Claudia M. & Eickmeier, Sandra & Prieto, Esteban, 2014. "In search for yield? Survey-based evidence on bank risk taking," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 12-30.
    23. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    24. Prescott, Edward C & Townsend, Robert M, 1984. "General Competitive Analysis in an Economy with Private Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 25(1), pages 1-20, February.
    25. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 27-48, Fall.
    26. Lin, Chen & Ma, Yue & Malatesta, Paul & Xuan, Yuhai, 2011. "Ownership structure and the cost of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 1-23, April.
    27. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Santos, João A.C., 2009. "Has the CDS market lowered the cost of corporate debt?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 514-523, May.
    28. Krippner, Leo, 2013. "Measuring the stance of monetary policy in zero lower bound environments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 135-138.
    29. Carlstrom, Charles T & Fuerst, Timothy S, 1997. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 893-910, December.
    30. Jonathan H. Wright, 2012. "What does Monetary Policy do to Long‐term Interest Rates at the Zero Lower Bound?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(564), pages 447-466, November.
    31. Stephen D. Oliner & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 1995. "Is there a bank lending channel for monetary policy?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-20.
    32. James D. Hamilton & Jing Cynthia Wu, 2012. "The Effectiveness of Alternative Monetary Policy Tools in a Zero Lower Bound Environment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(s1), pages 3-46, February.
    33. Jeremy C. Stein & Anil K. Kashyap, 2000. "What Do a Million Observations on Banks Say about the Transmission of Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 407-428, June.
    34. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2011. "The Effects of Quantitative Easing on Interest Rates: Channels and Implications for Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 43(2 (Fall)), pages 215-287.
    35. Chen, Huafeng (Jason) & Chen, Shaojun (Jenny), 2012. "Investment-cash flow sensitivity cannot be a good measure of financial constraints: Evidence from the time series," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 393-410.
    36. Han Chen & Vasco Cúrdia & Andrea Ferrero, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Large‐scale Asset Purchase Programmes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(564), pages 289-315, November.
    37. Hancock, Diana & Passmore, Wayne, 2011. "Did the Federal Reserve's MBS purchase program lower mortgage rates?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(5), pages 498-514.
    38. Nicola Cetorelli & Linda S. Goldberg, 2012. "Banking Globalization and Monetary Transmission," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(5), pages 1811-1843, October.
    39. Leo Krippner, 2015. "A comment on Wu and Xia (2015), and the case for two-factor Shadow Short Rates," CAMA Working Papers 2015-48, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    40. Hadiye Aslan & Praveen Kumar, 2012. "Strategic Ownership Structure and the Cost of Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(7), pages 2257-2299.
    41. Michael D. Bauer & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2014. "The Signaling Channel for Federal Reserve Bond Purchases," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 10(3), pages 233-289, September.
    42. Brown, James R. & Petersen, Bruce C., 2011. "Cash holdings and R&D smoothing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 694-709, June.
    43. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    44. Kashyap, Anil K & Stein, Jeremy C & Wilcox, David W, 1996. "Monetary Policy and Credit Conditions: Evidence from the Composition of External Finance: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 310-314, March.
    45. Aysun, Uluc, 2016. "Bank size and macroeconomic shock transmission: Does the credit channel operate through large or small banks?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 117-139.
    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. Mira Farka, 2022. "The credit channel of monetary policy before and after the zero lower bound: Evidence from the US equity market," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 633-693, September.

    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. Aysun, Uluc & Jeon, Kiyoung & Kabukcuoglu, Zeynep, 2018. "Is the credit channel alive? Firm-level evidence on the sensitivity of borrowing spreads to monetary policy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 305-319.
    2. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    3. Matthieu Darracq Paries, 2018. "Financial frictions and monetary policy conduct," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph18-01 edited by Ferhat Mihoubi.
    4. Thi Bich Ngoc Tran & Hoang Cam Huong Pham, 2020. "The Spillover Effects of the US Unconventional Monetary Policy: New Evidence from Asian Developing Countries," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-26, July.
    5. Wang, Ling, 2019. "Measuring the effects of unconventional monetary policy on MBS spreads: A comparative study," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 235-251.
    6. van Holle, Frederiek, 2017. "Essays in empirical finance and monetary policy," Other publications TiSEM 30d11a4b-7bc9-4c81-ad24-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Guidolin, Massimo & Orlov, Alexei G. & Pedio, Manuela, 2017. "The impact of monetary policy on corporate bonds under regime shifts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 176-202.
    8. Canova, Fabio & Ciccarelli, Matteo & Altavilla, Carlo, 2016. "Mending the broken link: heterogeneous bank lending and monetary policy pass-through," CEPR Discussion Papers 11584, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Stéphane Lhuissier & Urszula Szczerbowicz, 2022. "Monetary Policy and Corporate Debt Structure," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(3), pages 497-515, June.
    10. Borrallo Egea, Fructuoso & Hierro, Luis Ángel, 2019. "Transmission of monetary policy in the US and EU in times of expansion and crisis," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 763-783.
    11. Mamatzakis, Emmanuel & Bermpei, Theodora, 2016. "What is the effect of unconventional monetary policy on bank performance?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 239-263.
    12. Claudio Borio & Anna Zabai, 2018. "Unconventional monetary policies: a re-appraisal," Chapters, in: Peter Conti-Brown & Rosa M. Lastra (ed.), Research Handbook on Central Banking, chapter 20, pages 398-444, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Aysun, Uluc, 2016. "Bank size and macroeconomic shock transmission: Does the credit channel operate through large or small banks?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 117-139.
    14. Kenneth N. Kuttner, 2018. "Outside the Box: Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Great Recession and Beyond," Department of Economics Working Papers 2018-04, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    15. Ippolito, Filippo & Ozdagli, Ali K. & Perez-Orive, Ander, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through bank lending: The floating rate channel," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 49-71.
    16. Mira Farka, 2022. "The credit channel of monetary policy before and after the zero lower bound: Evidence from the US equity market," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 633-693, September.
    17. Abdoulaye Millogo, 2020. "Hysteresis Effects and Macroeconomics Gains from Unconventional Monetary Policies Stabilization," Cahiers de recherche 20-12, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    18. Ramaprasad Bhar & Malliaris & Mary Malliaris, 2015. "The impact of large-scale asset purchases on the S&P 500 index, long-term interest rates and unemployment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(55), pages 6010-6018, November.
    19. Simon Gilchrist & Vivian Z. Yue & Egon Zakrajšek, 2016. "The Response of Sovereign Bond Yields to U.S. Monetary Policy," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Elías Albagli & Diego Saravia & Michael Woodford (ed.),Monetary Policy through Asset Markets: Lessons from Unconventional Measures and Implications for an Integrated World, edition 1, volume 24, chapter 8, pages 257-283, Central Bank of Chile.
    20. Simon Gilchrist & Vivian Yue & Egon Zakrajšek, 2019. "U.S. Monetary Policy and International Bond Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(S1), pages 127-161, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    credit channel; zero lower bound; firm-level data; shadow rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:vil:papers:27. 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: Christopher Kilby (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edvilus.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.