Corporate Bond Liquidity Spreads and Japanese Banks’ Risk Management: A Comparison of Two Financial Crises

Abstract

I empirically examine the components of Japanese bond spreads from views of market liquidity and funding liquidity based on Japanese investors’ liquidity demand during periods of two financial crises. Specifically, I first examine the different liquidity impacts of the Japanese-oriented financial crisis of the 1990s and the 2008 global financial crisis focusing on market liquidity and funding liquidity. Although Japan faces the major constraint of data availability problems, I overcame these problems and found some new and useful empirical evidence. Through econometric analysis, I identify three key issues. First, Japanese bond spreads are explained by the following factors: credit risk, macroeconomics, bond market liquidity, and Japanese banks’ funding liquidity. Second, the liquidity impacts of the Japanese-oriented financial crisis of the 1990s and the 2008 global financial crisis are of completely different types. During the Japanese-oriented financial crisis of the 1990s, bond spreads were affected by two kinds of liquidities - market liquidity and funding liquidity, but during the 2008 global financial crisis, bond spreads were affected only by market liquidity. Finally, removing temporary paralytic periods of the Japanese bond market from the global financial crisis period, Japanese banks’ intermediary function is relatively sound and useful. Thus, Japanese banks, which are the main players in the bond market, do not face a funding liquidity problem, and bond spreads are not affected by funding liquidity in Japan. This is not the case for European or U.S. bond spreads.