Olivier Darmouni

Associate Professor

Columbia Business School

Research Interests

Credit markets, monetary policy, energy transition

Working Papers

Brown Capital (Re)Allocation

with Yuqi Zhang. New draft! Data on Coal Power Plant Ownership in Europe

We study who owns coal power plants -- the largest single source of carbon emissions -- in Europe. A sharp increase in private firms' ownership was met by a large decline in public equity ownership. This decline was not driven by public equity investors selling plants, but by their scaling down of plants quickly. State investors played a crucial role, selling to private firms and slowly scaling down their plants. We calibrate a model in which asset owners vary in how they value externalities. Nationalization by state investors that value social factors (jobs, ``energy security'') can hinder ``green finance'' in decreasing emissions.

The Rise of Market Financing in Europe: Evidence from New and Small Issuers

with Melina Papoutsi. New version!

Using newly available micro-data on public and private firms, this paper documents the rise of market financing in the euro area through the lens of new and small issuers. Recent new issuers of debt securities are typically small, private, and unrated. The spreads of small unrated issuers are comparable to high-yield bonds. Holdings of traditional ``buy-and-hold''  investors are small for unrated and smaller issuers, while non-bank intermediaries are large investors. However, these non-bank intermediaries were as stabilizing as insurers during the March 2020 turmoil. Nevertheless, the subsequent bond issuance wave was restricted to large and rated firms. The market for new issuers' debt thus more closely resembles "private debt" markets than the traditional bond market.

Under Revision

Nonbank Fragility in Credit Markets: Evidence from a Two-Layer Asset Demand System

R&R Journal of Finance

with Kerry Siani and Kairong Xiao. New version!

We develop a two-layer asset demand framework to analyze  fragility in the corporate bond market. Households allocate wealth to institutions, which  allocate funds to specific assets. The framework generates tractable joint dynamics of flows and asset values, featuring amplification and contagion, by combining a flow-performance relationship for fund flows with a logit model of institutional asset demand. The framework can be estimated using micro-data on bond prices,  investor holdings, and fund flows, allowing for rich parameter heterogeneity across assets and institutions. We match the model to the March 2020 turmoil and  quantify the equilibrium  effects of unconventional monetary and liquidity policies on asset prices and institutions. 

Bond Market Stimulus: Firm-Level Evidence

with Kerry Siani, R&R (2nd Round) Journal of Monetary Economics

How do asset purchases by  central banks transmit to the real economy? Using micro-data on corporate balance sheets, we study firm behavior after the unprecedented policy support to corporate bond markets in 2020. As bond yields fell, firms issued bonds to accumulate large and persistent amounts of liquid assets. The effects on real investment was generally weak: many issuers already had access to bank liquidity and maintained equity payouts, while others used bond funds to pay back bank debt. This evidence sheds light on how corporate liquidity  and financial heterogeneity matter for the macro-economy and the transmission of unconventional policy. 

Formally titled: Crowding-Out Bank Loans: Liquidity-Driven Bond Issuance

Work in Progress

“Green Capital Allocation and the Business Cycle” (with Pari Sastry)

“Greening the Data Economy”

“Green Capital Allocation across the Globe”

Publications

Investment when New Capital is Hard to Find

Journal of Financial Economics, 2024

with Andrew Sutherland

We examine how the supply of fixed capital affects firm investment. Using equipment transaction-level data, we find pandemic-driven production disruptions significantly altered capital reallocation patterns across firms. A surge in used capital trading activity softened the investment decline, as firms acquired used capital from distant and dissimilar counterparts. Younger firms were disproportionately affected even though they rarely purchase new capital: while in normal times older firms sell their capital to younger firms, following a supply shock, older firms compete for used capital, pricing out younger firms. Our evidence highlights the crucial role of secondary markets and distributive externalities for corporate investment.

The Savings of Corporate Giants 

Review of Financial Studies, 2024

with Lira Mota. Data available here: www.corporategiants.net/ 

We construct a novel panel dataset to provide new evidence on how the largest nonfinancial firms manage their financial assets. Our granular data  shows that, over the past decade, bond portfolios have grown to be at least as large as cash-like instruments, driven by the meteoric rise of corporate bond holdings. To shed light on the drivers of this growth, we conduct a pair of event studies around the 2017 tax reform and the 2020 liquidity crisis. Large holdings of marketable securities are primarily driven by cross-border tax incentives, while cash-like instruments are driven by liquidity motives.

Bank Liquidity Provision Across the Firm Size Distribution

with Gabriel Chodorow Reich, Stephan Luck and Matthew Plosser

Journal of Financial Economics, 2022

We use supervisory loan-level data to document that small firms (SMEs) obtain shorter maturity credit lines than large firms; post more collateral; have higher utilization rates; and pay higher spreads. We rationalize these facts as the equilibrium outcome of a trade-off between lender commitment and discretion. Using the COVID recession, we test the prediction that SMEs are subject to greater lender discretion. Consistent with this hypothesis, SMEs did not drawdown in contrast to large firms, even in response to similar demand shocks. PPP recipients reduced non-PPP loan balances, indicating the program bolstered their liquidity and alleviated the shortfall.

Learning about Competitors: Evidence from SME Lending 

with Andrew Sutherland

Review of Financial Studies, 2021

We study how SME lenders react to information about their competitors' contracting decisions. To isolate this learning from lenders' common reaction to unobserved shocks to fundamentals, we exploit the staggered entry of lenders into an information sharing platform. Upon entering, lenders adjust their contract terms toward what others offer. This reaction is mediated by the distribution of market shares: lenders with higher shares or operating in concentrated markets react less.  Thus, contract terms are shaped not only by borrower or lender fundamentals, but also by the interaction between information availability and competition.

Informational Frictions and the Credit Crunch 

Journal of Finance, 2020

2020 JF Brattle Prize for Distinguished Paper

This paper estimates the magnitude of an informational friction limiting credit reallocation to firms during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Because lenders rely on private information when deciding which relationship to end, borrowers looking for a new lender are adversely selected. I show how to identify private information separately from information common to all lenders but unobservable to the econometrician by using bank shocks within a discrete choice model of relationships. Quantitatively, these informational frictions seem too small to explain the credit crunch in the U.S. syndicated corporate loan market.

The Effects of Quantitative Easing on Bank Lending Behavior

with Alexander Rodnyansky

Review of Financial Studies, 2017

Banks’ exposure to large-scale asset purchases, as measured by the relative prevalence of mortgage-backed securities on their books, affects lending following unconventional monetary policy shocks. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, this paper finds strong effects of the first and third round of quantitative easing (QE1 and QE3) on credit. Highly affected commercial banks increase lending by 3% relative to their counterparts. QE2 had no significant impact, consistent with its exclusive focus on Treasuries sparsely held by banks. Overall, banks respond heterogeneously and the type of asset being targeted is central to QE.

Other papers

Corporate Bond Issuance and Bank Lending in the United States (with Kerry Siani), European Economy: Banks, Regulation, and the Real Sector - Banking and Covid, 2021

Horizon Effects and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets (with Dan Zeltzer)  Canadian Journal of Economics 2022

The Bond Lending Channel of Monetary Policy 

with Oliver Giesecke and Alexander Rodnyansky

Pulp Friction: The Value of Quantity Contracts in Decentralized Markets

with Simon Essig Aberg and Juha Tolvanen, R&R Rand Journal of Economics