Scientists believe significant climate change is unavoidable without a drastic reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels. However, few countries have implemented comprehensive policies that price this externality or devote serious resources to developing low-carbon energy sources. In many respects, the world is betting that we will greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels because we will run out of inexpensive fossil fuels (there will be decreases in supply) and/or technological advances will lead to the discovery of less-expensive low-carbon technologies (there will be decreases in demand). The historical record indicates that the supply of fossil fuels has consistently increased over time and that their relative price advantage over low-carbon energy sources has not declined substantially over time. Without robust efforts to correct the market failures around greenhouse gases, relying on supply and/or demand forces to limit greenhouse gas emissions is relying heavily on hope.
This paper describes the market for borrowing corporate bonds using a comprehensive dataset from a major lender. The cost of borrowing corporate bonds is comparable to the cost of borrowing stock, between 10 and 20 basis points, and both have fallen over time. Factors that influence borrowing costs are loan size, percentage of inventory lent, rating, and borrower identity. There is no evidence that bond short sellers have private information. Bonds with CDS contracts are more actively lent than those without. Finally, the 2007 Credit Crunch does not affect average borrowing costs or loan volume, but does increase borrowing cost variance.Keywords: Short Sales, Securities Lending, Corporate Bonds, CDS JEL Classifications: G12, G14 * We thank seminar participants at the JACF Conference in Honor of Stew Myers, the Harvard Finance lunch, Talinn Demirjian and Jeri Seidman for comments. In addition, we are grateful to Sharat Alankar, Joseph Keith, Ted Keith, Patrick Sissman, and Caroline Hane-Weijman for research assistance. We also thank a number of practitioners for answering our questions about how this market works. Finally, we thank the Q Group for their financial support. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of State Street Corporation. The Market for Borrowing Corporate BondsThis paper describes the market for borrowing corporate bonds using a comprehensive dataset from a major lender. The cost of borrowing corporate bonds is comparable to the cost of borrowing stock, between 10 and 20 basis points, and both have fallen over time. Factors that influence borrowing costs are loan size, percentage of inventory lent, rating, and borrower identity. There is no evidence that bond short sellers have private information. Bonds with CDS contracts are more actively lent than those without. Finally, the 2007 Credit Crunch does not affect average borrowing costs or loan volume, but does increase borrowing cost variance.3
Many financial markets have recently become subject to new regulations requiring transparency. This paper studies how mandatory transparency affects trading in the corporate bond market. In July 2002, TRACE began requiring the public dissemination of post-trade price and volume information for corporate bonds. Dissemination took place in Phases, with actively traded, investment grade bonds becoming transparent before thinly traded, high-yield bonds. Using new data and a differences-in-differences research design, we find that transparency causes a significant decrease in price dispersion for all bonds and a significant decrease in trading activity for some categories of bonds. The largest decrease in daily price standard deviation, 24.7%, and the largest decrease in trading activity, 41.3%, occurs for bonds in the final Phase, which consisted primarily of high-yield bonds. These results indicate that mandated transparency may help some investors and dealers through a decline in price dispersion, while harming others through a reduction in trading activity.
ossil fuels provide substantial economic benefits, but in recent decades, a series of concerns have arisen about their environmental costs. In the United States, for example, the Clean Air Act in 1970 and 1977 addressed concerns over the emissions of so-called conventional pollutions, notably airborne particulate matter, by imposing fuel economy standards on vehicles and regulations to reduce emissions from stationary sources. During the 1980s, concerns mounted about how the combustion of fossil fuels could lead to acid rain and rising ozone levels. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 created frameworks to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from power plant emissions, as well as from the combustion of gasoline and diesel fuels in vehicles. However, in many of the world's largest cities in the emerging economies around the world, the conventional forms of air pollution from burning fossil fuels-especially particulates, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides-are still exacting a heavy toll on human health (Chay and
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