The Corporate Supply of (Quasi) Safe Assets - Lira Mota

Finance

Speaker : Lira Mota (Columbia) 

Videoconference

Investors value safety services in nancial assets, such as the ability to serve as a store of value, to serve as collateral, or to meet mandatory capital and liquidity requirements. I present a model in which investors value safety services not only in traditional safe assets such as US Treasuries, but also in corporate debt. Shareholders thus maximize the value of the rm by complementing standard business operations with safe asset creation. Based on this theoretical framework, I use the CDS-bond basis to derive a measurement of the safety premium of corporate bonds. I document substantial cross sectional variation in the safety premium of corporate bonds, which allows me to test the model's predictions. I show that a high safety premium leads to a marked increase in debt issuance by relatively safer rms. These debt proceeds have a small impact on real investment and are largely used instead for equity payouts. This mechanism can explain why, in the aftermath of the nancial crisis, non- nancial investment grade companies signi cantly increased their debt issuance and equity payout while investment remained weak.

Click here to download the paper