We examine the effects of the government guarantee schemes for bank bonds adopted in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers demise to help banks retain access to wholesale funding. We describe the evolution and the pattern of bond issuance across countries to assess the effect of the schemes. Then...

I analyze the risk premium on bank bonds at origination with special focus on the role of implicit and explicit public guarantees and the systemic relevance of issuing institutions. Looking at the asset swap spread on 5,500 bonds, I find that explicit guarantees and sovereign creditworthiness...