Monetary Policy and Corporate Debt Structure
Résumé
This paper evaluates and compares the effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policies on the corporate debt structure in the United States. It does so by using a vector autoregression in which policy shocks are identified through high‐frequency external instruments. Our results show that both monetary policies shift the firms’ composition of external financing, though in a different way. An expansionary conventional (unconventional) monetary policy leads to a rise (decline) in loans and a decline (rise) in debt securities issuance. Our results suggest that unconventional monetary policy operated primarily through a portfolio rebalancing channel, rather than through a bank lending channel.