Global Corporate Bond Issuance: What Role for US Quantitative Easing?

Abstract

The paper investigates the impact of US quantitative easing (QE) on global non-financial corporate bond issuance. It distinguishes between two QE instruments, MBS/GSE debt and Treasury bonds, and disentangles between two channels of transmission of QE to global bond markets, namely flow effects (purchases) and stock effects (holdings). We control for a number of domestic and global macro-financial factors. In particular, we control for weaknesses in cross-border and domestic banking which might have induced the corporate sector to issue more bonds. The results indicate that US QE had a large impact on corporate bond issuance, especially in emerging markets, and that flow effects (i.e. portfolio rebalancing) were the main transmission channel of QE. A counterfactual analysis shows that bond issuance in emerging markets since 2009 would have been halved without QE.

Keywords: monetary policy, quantitative easing, spill-overs, bond issuance, Federal Reserve, United States, crisis management, emerging markets

JEL Classification: E52, E58, F42, G15