Treasury Markets and Financial Intermediation

We document a regime change in the Treasury market post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC): dealers switched from net short to net long Treasury bonds. We construct “net-long” and “net-short” curves that account for balance sheet and financing costs, and show that actual yields moved from the net short curve pre-GFC to the net long curve post-GFC. Our theory shows the regime shift caused negative swap spreads and co-movement among swap spreads, dealer positions, and covered-interest-parity violations. Furthermore, the effects of various monetary and regulatory policies are regime-dependent. We highlight Treasury supply as a plausible driver of this regime shift.

We construct a novel dataset of sector-level U.S. Treasury holdings, covering the majority of the market. Using this dataset, we estimate maturity-specific demand functions and elasticities of different investors and the Fed, and integrate them into a dynamic equilibrium model of the Treasury market with risk-averse arbitrageurs. Quantifying the model reveals that (1) there is a steep downward-sloping term structure of Treasury market elasticity; (2) monetary tightening raises term premia due to arbitrageurs interacting with investors exhibiting high cross-elasticities; (3) QE has limited impact unless the Fed credibly commits to sustained balance sheet expansion.

We demonstrate the passthrough of Treasury supply to bank deposits through bank market power. We show that a larger Treasury supply crowds out deposits with disproportionate effects in more competitive deposit markets. A larger Treasury supply further curtails bank lending and affects bank funding structure. The explanatory power of Treasury supply is not driven by other shocks to deposit demand and supply. In comparison, monetary policy rate hikes have a larger impact on deposit funding in more concentrated markets, consistent with the deposits channel of monetary policy. Our empirical findings are rationalized in a model of imperfect deposit competition.