Build America Bonds (BABs) were issued by states and municipalities for twenty months as an alternative to tax-exempt bonds. The program was part of the 2009 fi scal stimulus package. The bonds are taxable to the holder, but the federal Treasury rebates 35% of the coupon payment to the issuer....

Dealers in the over-the-counter municipal bond market form trading networks with other dealers to mitigate search frictions. Regulatory audit trail data show the dealer network has a core-periphery structure with 10 to 30 hubs and over 2,000 peripheral broker-dealers in which bonds flow in a...

Traditional liquidity measures can provide a false impression of the liquidity and stability of financial market trading. Using data on auctions (bids wanted in competition; BWICs) from the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) market, we show that a standard measure of liquidity, the effective...

We examine the network of trading relations between insurers and dealers in the over-the-counter corporate bond market. Comprehensive regulatory data shows that many insurers use only one dealer while the largest insurers have networks of up to forty dealers. Large insurers receive better prices...

The effective functioning of the municipal bond market is crucial for the provision of public services, as it is the largest capital market for state and municipal issuers. Prior research has documented tax, credit, liquidity, and segmentation effects in municipal bonds. Recent regulatory...