Excerpt
July 2023, Paper: "We study the extent of interest rate risk sharing across the financial system. We use granular positions and transactions data in interest rate swaps, covering over 60% of overall swap activity in the world. We show that pension and insurance (PF&I) sector emerges as a natural counterparty to banks and corporations: overall, and in response to decline in rates, PF&I buy duration, whereas banks and corporations sell duration. This cross-sector netting reduces the aggregate net demand that is supplied by dealers. However, two factors impede cross-sector netting and add to dealer imbalances across maturities. (i) PF&I, bank and corporate demand is segmented across maturities. (ii) Large volumes are traded by hedge funds, who behave like banks in the short end and like PF&I in the long end. This worsens segmentation, exposing dealers to a steepening or flattening of the yield curve in addition to residual duration risk. Consistent with this, we find that demand pressure, in particular hedge funds’ trades, impact swap spreads across maturities. We also document that long-tenor pension fund trades are less."