Did Liquidity Providers Become Liquidity Seekers?

The misalignment between corporate bond and credit default swap (CDS) spreads (i.e., CDSbond basis) during the 2007-09 financial crisis is often attributed to corporate bond dealers shedding off their inventory, right when liquidity was scarce. This paper documents evidence against this widespread perception. In the months following Lehman's collapse, dealers, including proprietary trading desks in investment banks, provided liquidity in response to the large selling by clients. Corporate bond inventory of dealers rose sharply as a result. Although providing liquidity, limits to arbitrage, possibly in the form of limited capital, obstructed the convergence of the basis. We further show that the unwinding of precrisis 'basis trades' by hedge funds is the main driver of the large negative basis. Price drops following Lehman's collapse were concentrated among bonds with available CDS contracts and high activity in basis trades. Overall, our results indicate that hedge funds that serve as alternative liquidity providers at times, not dealers, caused the disruption in the credit market

The Scarcity Value of Treasury Collateral: Repo Market Effects of Security-Specific Supply and Demand Factors

In the repo market, forward agreements are security-specific (i.e., there are no deliverable substitutes), which makes it an ideal place to measure the value of fluctuations in a security's available supply. In this study, we quantify the scarcity value of Treasury collateral by estimating the impact of security-specific demand and supply factors on the repo rates of all the outstanding U.S. Treasury securities. Our results indicate the existence of an economically and statistically significant scarcity premium, especially for shorter-term securities. The estimated scarcity effect is quite persistent, seems to be reflected in the Treasury market prices, and could in part explain the flow-effects of the Fed's asset purchase programs. More generally, it provides additional evidence in favor of the scarcity channel of quantitative easing. These findings also suggest that, through the same mechanism, the Fed's reverse repo operations could help alleviate potential shortages of high-quality collateral

Equilibrium and welfare in markets with financially constrained arbitrageurs

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3597.9512(no 3049) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Banks and Market Liquidity

I study a model of market-liquidity provision by levered intermediaries that, besides operating trading desks, run deposit-taking franchises. Levered intermediaries heightened incentive to absorb risk helps to counteract liquidity-provision frictions that, in an unlevered economy, would lead to price distortions and suppressed levels of asset origination ex ante. However, liquidity provision may also overshoot, leading to unhealthy price bubbles and causing asset origination to become excessive. Capital requirements are no panacea: They can spur risk taking and make bubbles bubblier. Ring fencing of trading activities can be, but is not necessarily, undesirable