Vulnerable funding in the global economy

Abstract

This study builds on the conceptual framework of vulnerable growth to examine how US financial shocks influence the conditional distribution of real credit growth across a diverse set of countries, a phenomenon we term vulnerable funding. We show that deteriorating US financial conditions are linked to a reduction in real credit growth abroad, with particularly pronounced effects at the lower quantiles of real credit growth abroad. This suggests that, in common with the episodes of vulnerable growth discussed in the extant literature, episodes of vulnerable funding are also triggered globally by financial weakness in the US. However, our analysis reveals significant variation in the impact of US financial shocks across the quantiles of credit growth in countries worldwide. Specifically, countries with lower credit-to-GDP ratios or with higher levels of US investment relative to their GDP exhibit greater real credit growth vulnerability.