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Working Paper
A User’s Guide to Reducing the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet
For the avoidance of doubt: 1) This catalogue presents and analyzes a variety of options for reducing the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Nothing here is an endorsement of any specific policy option; this is a menu of options. Combined, we estimate these options open the door to balance sheet reduction of $1.2 to $2.1 trillion within the Fed’s current ample reserves framework. Further reductions would be possible with a return to scarce reserves. 2) The process of materially shrinking the balance sheet would require a great deal of implementation and rulemaking work in advance and will ...
Working Paper
Beyond Reserves: The Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet and the Repo Market
We present a new constraint on the size of the Fed’s balance sheet: repo market capacity. Calibrating a structural model to the recent monetary tightening cycle, we show that repo market capacity—driven by money market fund liquidity supply—is the binding constraint on the Fed’s balance sheet, not bank reserve demand, which was highlighted in the events of September 2019. We also demonstrate a novel complementarity between interest rate and balance sheet policies: higher policy rates expand repo capacity, allowing the central bank to operate with a smaller balance sheet.
Working Paper
Ambiguity in Securitization Markets
During the financial crisis of 2008, origination and trading in asset-backed securities markets dropped dramatically. I present a model with ambiguity averse investors to explain how such a market freeze could occur and to investigate how ambiguity affects origination and securitization decisions. The model captures many features of the crisis, including market freezes and fire sales, as well as the timing and duration of the freeze. The presence of ambiguity also reduces real economic activity. Lastly, I consider the differing implications of ambiguity and risk, as well as the role of ...
Working Paper
Modelling Overnight RRP Participation
We examine how market participants have used the Federal Reserve?s overnight reverse repurchase (ON RRP) exercise and how short-term interest rates have evolved between December 2013 and November 2014. We show that money market fund (MMF) participation is sensitive to the spread between market repo rates and the ON RRP offering rate as well as Treasury bill issuance, government sponsored enterprise (GSE) participation is more heavily driven by calendar effects, dealers tend to only participate when rate spreads are negative, and banks generally do not participate. We also find that the effect ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Implementation and Private Repo Displacement : Evidence from the Overnight Reverse Repurchase Facility
In recent years, the scale and scope of major central banks' intervention in financial markets has expanded in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we demonstrate how monetary policy implementation that relies on such intervention in financial markets can displace private transactions. Specifically, we examine the experience with the Federal Reserve's newest policy tool, known as the overnight reverse repurchase (ONRRP) facility, to understand its effects on the repo market. Using exogenous variation in the parameters of the ONRRP facility, we show that participation in the ONRRP comes from ...
Working Paper
Arbitrage Capital of Global Banks
We show that the role of unsecured, short-term wholesale funding for global banks has changed significantly in the post-financial-crisis regulatory environment. Global banks mainly use such funding to finance liquid, near risk-free arbitrage positions---in particular, the interest on excess reserves arbitrage and the covered interest rate parity arbitrage. In this environment, we examine the response of global banks to a large negative wholesale funding shock as a result of the U.S. money market mutual fund reform implemented in 2016. In contrast to past episodes of wholesale funding dry-ups, ...
Working Paper
Are Repo Markets Fragile? Evidence from September 2019
We show that the segmented structure of the U.S. Treasury repo market, in which some participants have limited access across the segments, leads to rate dispersion, even in this essentially riskless market. Using confidential data on repo trading, we demonstrate how the rate dispersion between the centrally cleared and over-the-counter (OTC) segments of the Treasury repo market was exacerbated during the stress episode of September 2019. Our results highlight that, while segmentation can increase fragility in the repo market, the presence of strong trading relationships in the OTC segment ...
Working Paper
LCR Premium in the Federal Funds Market
We document the existence of a regulatory premium in the federal funds market related to the implementation of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). We use difference-in-differences analysis and confidential bank level data on borrowing in the fed funds and Eurodollar markets to compare the interest rates paid by banks subject to daily reporting of their liquidity profile (daily reporters) relative to other banks. We find that, after the implementation of LCR, daily reporters paid a higher rate compared to other banks when borrowing in the fed funds market given the LCR-favorability of many of ...
Discussion Paper
Bankers’ Banks and their Role in the Federal Funds Market
The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Federal Reserve's (Fed) large-scale asset purchases fundamentally reshaped the U.S. monetary policy implementation framework. Before 2008, the Fed operated under a scarce-reserves regime, steering the federal funds rate through daily open market operations.
Discussion Paper
Repo Markets and the Fed's Balance Sheet: Implications for Monetary Policy Implementation
As the Federal Reserve (Fed) navigates periods of balance sheet expansion and reduction, it has become increasingly important to understand how changes in the size and composition of Fed assets affect short-term funding markets. The overnight Treasury repo market is central to this relationship since it is a transmission channel through which balance sheet policy can affect money market conditions and, ultimately, the Fed's policy rate, the effective federal funds rate (EFFR).