Credit spread variability in the U.S. business cycle: The Great Moderation versus the Great Recession

Hylton Hollander and Guangling Liu ()

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2016, vol. 67, issue C, 37-52

Abstract: This paper identifies the prevailing financial factors that influence credit spread variability and shows how they affected the U.S. business cycle during the 1990–91 and 2001 recessions of the Great Moderation period (1984–2006) and the Great Recession of 2007–09. To do this, we develop and estimate a dynamic general equilibrium model in which financial intermediation and equity assets play a central role. Over the three recession periods, we find that bank market power (sticky rate adjustments and loan rate markups) played a significant role in the credit spread variability that disrupted the U.S. business cycle. Equity prices exacerbate movements in credit spreads through the financial accelerator channel, but cannot be regarded as one of the main driving forces of credit spread variability. Across the three periods, we observe a remarkable decline in the influence of technology and monetary policy shocks. The influence of loan-to-value ratio shocks declined after the 1990–91 recession, while the bank capital requirement shock exacerbated and prolonged credit spread variability over the 2007–09 recession.

Keywords: Financial intermediation; Credit spread; Financial friction; Great Recession; Great Moderation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E43 E44 E51 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426616000467
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Credit spread variability in U.S. business cycles: the Great Moderation versus the Great Recession (2014)
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:eee:jbfina:v:67:y:2016:i:c:p:37-52

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2016.02.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().