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Report
Uptake of the Main Street Lending Program
The Main Street Lending Program (Main Street) was one of several new credit facilities launched by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Reserve published draft terms for Main Street on April 9, 2020, and the program started purchasing loan participations on July 6, 2020, with the goal of supporting lending to a wide range of small and medium-sized businesses that were in sound financial condition before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the program’s draft terms were first circulated, pandemic-related ...
Working Paper
Corporate Finance and the Transmission of Shocks to the Real Economy
Credit availability from different sources varies greatly across firms and has firm-level effects on investment decisions and aggregate effects on output. We develop a theoretical framework in which firms decide endogenously at the extensive and intensive margins of different funding sources to study the role of firm choices on the transmission of credit supply shocks to the real economy. As in the data, firms can borrow from different banks, issue bonds, or raise equity through retained earnings to fund productive investment. Our model is calibrated to detailed firm- and loan-level data and ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Primary Dealer Constraints on Intermediation in the Treasury Market
Using confidential microdata, we show that shocks to primary dealers’ risk-bearing constraints have significant effects on the US Treasury securities market. In response to tighter constraints, dealers reduce their Treasury positions, triggering a reduction in aggregate turnover and an increase in bid–ask spreads. These effects are more pronounced in securities that contribute more to the utilization of risk constraints. The impaired intermediation also affects Treasury yields, amplifying the yield response to net demand shifts. Moreover, tighter dealer constraints weaken Treasury auction ...
Report
Uncovering covered interest parity: the role of bank regulation and monetary policy
We analyze the factors underlying the recent deviations from covered interest parity. We show that these deviations can be explained by tighter post-crisis bank capital regulations that made the provision of foreign exchange swaps more costly. Moreover, the recent monetary policy and related interest rate divergence between the United States and other major foreign countries has led to a surge in demand for swapping low interest rate currencies into the U.S. dollar. Given the higher bank balance sheet costs resulting from these regulatory changes, the increased demand for U.S. dollars in the ...
Report
Stress testing effects on portfolio similarities among large US Banks
We use an expansive regulatory loan-level dataset to analyze how the portfolios of the largest US banks have evolved since 2011. In particular, we analyze how the commercial and industrial and commercial real estate loan portfolios have changed in response to stress-testing requirements stipulated in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. We find that the largest US banks, which are subject to stress testing, have become more similar since the current form of the stress testing was implemented in 2011. We also find that banks with poor stress test results tend to adjust their portfolios in a way that makes ...
Working Paper
The dynamic factor network model with an application to global credit risk
We introduce a dynamic network model with probabilistic link functions that depend on stochastically time-varying parameters. We adopt the widely used blockmodel framework and allow the high-dimensional vector of link probabilities to be a function of a low-dimensional set of dynamic factors. The resulting dynamic factor network model is straightforward and transparent by nature. However, parameter estimation, signal extraction of the dynamic factors, and the econometric analysis generally are intricate tasks for which simulation-based methods are needed. We provide feasible and practical ...
Working Paper
Output Spillovers from U.S. Monetary Policy: The Role of International Trade and Financial Linkages
We estimate that U.S. monetary policy has sizable spillover effects on global economic activity. In response to a surprise increase in the federal funds rate of 25 basis points, real output in our sample of 44 countries declines on average by 0.9% after three years. We find that international trade is a more important factor than international finance in explaining these spillovers. In particular, countries with a high share of exports and imports in output have 79% larger responses than countries with a low share, whereas we do not find significant heterogeneity depending on a country’s ...
Report
Firms’ Cash Holdings and Monetary Policy Transmission
Liquidity, particularly cash holdings, may serve as an important cushion for firms to absorb macroeconomic shocks such as interest rate increases so that these shocks have only minimal effects on their operations, at least in the short term. For example, to finance their investments, firms with high levels of cash may not have to tap so deep into debt financing, the cost of which relates closely to interest rates. Understanding the role of corporate cash holdings is therefore paramount to formulating appropriate monetary policy in the current environment. This brief informs the ongoing policy ...
Working Paper
The Transmission Mechanisms of International Business Cycles: Output Spillovers through Trade and Financial Linkages
We study the transmission channels through which shocks affect the global economy and the cross-country comovement of real economic activity. For this purpose, we collect detailed data on international trade and financial linkages as well as domestic macro and financial variables for a large set of countries. We document significant international output comovement following U.S. monetary shocks, and find that openness to international trade matters more than financial openness in explaining cross-country spillovers. In particular, output in countries with a high share of exports and imports ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Regulatory Stress Tests on Bank Lending and Its Macroeconomic Consequences
We use an expansive regulatory loan-level data set to analyze how the portfolios of the largest US banks have changed in response to the Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test (DFAST) requirements. We find that the portfolios of the largest banks, which are subject to stress-testing, have become more similar to each other since DFAST was implemented in 2011. We also find that banks with poor stress-test results tend to adjust their portfolios in a way that makes them more similar to the portfolios of banks that performed well in the stress-testing. In general, stress-testing has resulted in more ...