Working Paper

What Drives U.S. Treasury Re-use?

Abstract: We study what drives the re-use of U.S. Treasury securities in the financial system. Using confidential supervisory data, we estimate the degree of collateral re-use at the dealer level through their collateral multiplier : the ratio between a dealer's secured funding and their outright holdings. We find that Treasury re-use increases as the supply of available securities decreases, especially when supply declines due to Federal Reserve asset purchases. We also find that non-U.S. dealers' re-use increases when profits from intermediating cash are high, U.S. dealers' re-use increases when demand to source on-the-run Treasuries is high, and both types of dealers' re-use can alleviate safe asset scarcity. Finally, we document a sharp drop in Treasury re-use at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a subsequent reversal after the Federal Reserve's intervention to support market functioning.

Keywords: Re-use; Repo; Treasury; Collateral; Rehypothecation;

JEL Classification: E41; E51; E58; E63; G12; G24;

https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2020.103

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Publication Date: 2020-12-18

Number: 2020-103

Related Works

• Working Paper Revision: What Drives U.S. Treasury Re-use?