Mind the Gap: Disentangling Credit and Liquidity in Risk Spreads

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Finance Papers
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market liquidity
interbank credit
liquidity risk
money markets
interest rates
financial crisis
Finance and Financial Management
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Schwarz, Krista
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Wide and volatile interest rate spreads in the 2007-2009 financial crisis could represent concerns over asset liquidity or issuer solvency. To precisely identify the contribution of these two effects on sovereign bond and interbank spreads, I propose a model-free measure of euro-area market liquidity that captures all liquidity information impounded in bond yields. I find that credit and liquidity are independently important in risk spreads; the role of liquidity dominates in the interbank market, while its relative importance in sovereign bond spreads varies substantially by country. I exploit variation in sovereign bond returns over countries, maturities and time to directly test liquidity risk pricing; the possibility that liquidity could be negatively correlated with marginal utility. I find that liquidity risk premia are large and significant, evidencing the importance of a liquidity channel missed by measures that capture only instantaneous liquidity.

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2017-02-12
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