14 Notions
As a consequence of their specialness, the returns on safe assets are lower than
they would otherwise be: this is called the “convenience yield”. Using the spread
between Aaa- rated US corporate bonds and Treasury securities as a measure,
Krishnamurthy and Vissing- Jørgensen (2012) estimate this convenience yield
was on average 73 points on US Treasury securities over the period 1926–2008.
It increases when Treasuries are relatively scarce.
According to Bernanke (2005), the main reason behind the deterioration of the
US current account over the period 1996–2003 was a “savings glut”, i.e. a general
shortage of assets. Caballero etal. (2017) focus on the global shortage of safe assets.
This safe asset shortage is driven by the hig ...