Safety Transformation and the Structure of the Financial System
研究金融体系如何为高效创造安全资产而组织，并应对宏观经济冲击，发现安全资产需求增加导致中介机构更大更风险、企业杠杆更高，而量化宽松则降低中介规模和风险，可能减少企业杠杆。
ABSTRACT This paper studies how a financial system that is organized to efficiently create safe assets responds to macroeconomic shocks. Financial intermediaries face a cost of bearing risk, so they choose the least risky portfolio that backs their issuance of riskless deposits: a diversified pool of nonfinancial firms' debt. Nonfinancial firms choose their capital structure to exploit the resulting segmentation between debt and equity markets. Increased safe asset demand yields larger and riskier intermediaries and more levered firms. Quantitative easing reduces the size and riskiness of intermediaries and can decrease firm leverage, despite reducing borrowing costs at the zero lower bound.