Credit-Market Sentiment and the Business Cycle / David López-Salido, Jeremy C. Stein, Egon Zakrajšek.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

López-Salido, David.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Stein, Jeremy C.

Zakrajšek, Egon.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21879.

NBER working paper series no. w21879

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Using U.S. data from 1929 to 2013, we show that elevated credit-market sentiment in year t - 2 is associated with a decline in economic activity in years t and t + 1. Underlying this result is the existence of predictable mean reversion in credit-market conditions. That is, when our sentiment proxies indicate that credit risk is aggressively priced, this tends to be followed by a subsequent widening of credit spreads, and the timing of this widening is, in turn, closely tied to the onset of a contraction in economic activity. Exploring the mechanism, we find that buoyant credit-market sentiment in year t - 2 also forecasts a change in the composition of external finance: net debt issuance falls in year t, while net equity issuance increases, patterns consistent with the reversal in credit-market conditions leading to an inward shift in credit supply. Unlike much of the current literature on the role of financial frictions in macroeconomics, this paper suggests that time-variation in expected returns to credit market investors can be an important driver of economic fluctuations.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2016.