IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedhwp/93028.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Covid-19 Related Policy Responses on Municipal Debt Markets

Author

Abstract

Municipal (muni) bonds are an important source of funding for state and local governments. During the Covid-19 pandemic, muni debt markets became severely distressed. In response, the Federal Reserve established the Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF). Meanwhile, Congress enacted extensive fiscal measures that included direct aid to cities and states. To understand whether and how these policies worked, we employ a state-level regression model to estimate the relative efficacy of monetary and fiscal policy interventions for the term structure of muni-Treasury yield spreads. We find that fiscal and monetary policy together reduced those spreads by as much as 245 basis points. Fiscal policy contributed twice as much as monetary policy to the notable decline in shorter-term muni-Treasury spreads. At longer maturities, the contribution of fiscal policy was at least three times as large as that of monetary policy, suggesting that it addressed fundamental credit concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Bernhardt & Stefania D'Amico & Santiago I. Sordo Palacios, 2021. "The Impact of Covid-19 Related Policy Responses on Municipal Debt Markets," Working Paper Series WP-2021-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:93028
    DOI: 10.21033/wp-2021-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/working-papers/2021/wp2021-14-pdf.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.21033/wp-2021-14?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Bordo & John V. Duca, 2021. "How the New Fed Municipal Bond Facility Capped Muni-Treasury Yield Spreads in the COVID-19 Recession," Working Papers 2101, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    2. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Raj Chetty & John N Friedman & Michael Stepner & Opportunity Insights Team & Camille Baker & Harvey Barnhard & Matt Bell & Gregory Bruich & Tina Chelidze & Lucas Chu & Westley Cineus & Sebi Devlin-Fol, 2024. "The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(2), pages 829-889.
    4. Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Or Shachar, 2021. "The Option Value of Municipal Liquidity: Evidence from Federal Lending Cutoffs during COVID-19," Staff Reports 988, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Marco Cipriani & Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Anna Kovner & Gabriele La Spada & Matthew Lieber & Shawn Nee, 2020. "Municipal Debt Markets and the COVID-19 Pandemic," Liberty Street Economics 20200629, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. Michael Schwert, 2017. "Municipal Bond Liquidity and Default Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1683-1722, August.
    7. Anton Gollwitzer & Cameron Martel & William J. Brady & Philip Pärnamets & Isaac G. Freedman & Eric D. Knowles & Jay J. Van Bavel, 2020. "Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1186-1197, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ivanov, Ivan T. & Zimmermann, Tom & Heinrich, Nathan W., 2022. "Limits of disclosure regulation in the municipal bond market," CFR Working Papers 22-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    2. Tran, Nhu & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2023. "Reprint of: COVID-19, lockdowns, and the municipal bond market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Or Shachar, 2021. "The Option Value of Municipal Liquidity: Evidence from Federal Lending Cutoffs during COVID-19," Staff Reports 988, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    4. Tran, Nhu & Uzmanoglu, Cihan, 2022. "COVID-19, lockdowns, and the municipal bond market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    5. W. Blake Marsh & Padma Sharma, 2021. "Government Loan Guarantees during a Crisis: The Effect of the PPP on Bank Lending and Profitability," Research Working Paper RWP 21-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    6. Bi, Huixin & Traum, Nora, 2023. "Unconventional monetary policy and local fiscal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    7. Gordon, Grey & Guerron-Quintana, Pablo, 2024. "On regional borrowing, default, and migration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    8. Huixin Bi & W. Blake Marsh, 2020. "Flight to Liquidity or Safety? Recent Evidence from the Municipal Bond Market," Research Working Paper RWP 20-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    9. Grey Gordon & Pablo Guerrón-Quintana, 2021. "Public Debt, Private Pain: Regional Borrowing, Default, and Migration," Working Paper 21-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    10. Leonardo Baccini & Abel Brodeur & Stephen Weymouth, 2021. "The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 739-767, April.
    11. Dena Bravata & Jonathan H. Cantor & Neeraj Sood & Christopher M. Whaley, 2021. "Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission," NBER Working Papers 28645, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Brodeur, Abel & Baccini, Leonardo & Weymouth, Stephen, 2020. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and US Presidential Elections," MetaArXiv sxajv, Center for Open Science.
    13. Bonaccorsi, Giovanni & Scotti, Francesco & Pierri, Francesco & Flori, Andrea & Pammolli, Fabio, 2024. "Targeted policies and household consumption dynamics: Evidence from high-frequency transaction data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 111-134.
    14. Andrew F. Haughwout & Benjamin Hyman & Or Shachar, 2021. "COVID Response: The Municipal Liquidity Facility," Staff Reports 985, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    15. Bordo, Michael D. & Duca, John V., 2023. "How the new fed municipal bond facility capped municipal-treasury yield spreads in the Covid-19 recession," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    16. Adam Brzezinski & Valentin Kecht & David Dijcke & Austin L. Wright, 2021. "Science skepticism reduced compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies in the United States," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1519-1527, November.
    17. Marco Cipriani & Gabriele La Spada, 2020. "Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Runs," Staff Reports 956, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    18. Filippos Petroulakis, 2023. "Task Content and Job Losses in the Great Lockdown," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(3), pages 586-613, May.
    19. Minjie Deng, 2024. "Inequality, Taxation, and Sovereign Default Risk," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 217-249, April.
    20. Lucia Freira & Marco Sartorio & Cynthia Boruchowicz & Florencia Lopez Boo & Joaquin Navajas, 2021. "The interplay between partisanship, forecasted COVID-19 deaths, and support for preventive policies," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary Policy; Policy Effects; Stabilization; Bond Market; Security Markets; Government Bonds; Local Government Bonds;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:93028. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.