The Safe-Asset Share

Gary Gorton, Stefan Lewellen and Andrew Metrick

No 17777, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We document that the percentage of all U.S. assets that are "safe" has remained stable at about 33 percent since 1952. This stable ratio is a rare example of calm in a rapidly changing financial world. Over the same time period, the ratio of U.S. assets to GDP has increased by a factor of 2.5, and the main supplier of safe financial debt has shifted from commercial banks to the "shadow banking system." We analyze this pattern of stylized facts and offer some tentative conclusions about the composition of the safe-asset share and its role within the overall economy.

JEL-codes: E02 E41 E44 E52 G2 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-bec, nep-cba and nep-mac
Note: AP CF ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (100)

Published as Gary Gorton & Stefan Lewellen & Andrew Metrick, 2012. "The Safe-Asset Share," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 101-06, May.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17777.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Safe-Asset Share (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17777

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17777

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().