Gap-filling government debt maturity choice

Frederik Eidam

No 18-025, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Do governments strategically choose debt maturity to fill supply gaps across maturities? Building on a new panel data set of more than 9,000 individual Eurozone government debt issues between 1999 and 2015, I find that governments increase long-term debt issues following periods of low aggregate Eurozone long-term debt issuance, and vice versa. This gap-filling behavior is more pronounced for (1) less financially constrained and (2) higher rated governments. Using the ECB's three-year LTRO in 2011-2012 as an event study, I find that core governments filled the supply gap of longer maturity debt, which resulted from peripheral governments accommodating banks' short-term debt demand for "carry trades". This gap-filling implies that governments act as macro-liquidity providers across maturities, thereby adding significant risk absorption capacity to government bond markets.

Keywords: Sovereign Debt; Maturity Structure; Market Segmentation; Central Bank Liquidity Provision; Long-Term Refinancing Operations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E58 E62 G11 H63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:18025

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