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Discussion Paper
How much lockdown policies contribute to local unemployment? Evidence from the first and second waves of COVID-19
Did people reduce their social interactions as a result of the pandemic, restrictive lockdown policies, or both? What was the impact of reduced social interactions on local employment? Importantly, why did unemployment spike during the first wave of the pandemic, but gradually decline thereafter, even though the outbreak was much more severe during the second wave? In this note, we attempt to answer these questions by exploiting newly available data on hours worked among small firms at the industry-county-state-week level.
Working Paper
Cyberattacks and Financial Stability: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
This paper studies the effects of a unique multi-day cyberattack on a technology service provider (TSP). Using several confidential daily datasets, we identify and quantify first- and second-round effects of the event. For banks using relevant services of the TSP, the attack impaired their ability to send payments over Fedwire, even though the Federal Reserve extended the time they had to submit payments. This impairment (first-round effect) caused other banks to receive fewer payments (second-round effect), leaving them at risk of having too few reserves to send their own payments (a ...
Discussion Paper
Implications of Cyber Risk for Financial Stability
Cyber risk, defined as the risk of loss from dependence on computer systems and digital technologies, has grown in the financial system. Cyber events, especially cyberattacks, are among the top risks cited in financial stability surveys in the United States and globally.
Working Paper
Trademarks in Banking
One in five banks in the United States share a similar name. This can increase the likelihood of confusion among customers in the event of an idiosyncratic shock to a similarly named bank. We find that banks that share their name with a failed bank experience a half percent drop in transaction deposits relative to banks with similar characteristics but different name. This effect doubles for failures that are covered in media. We rationalize our findings via a model of financial contagion without fundamental linkages. Our model explains that when distinguishing banks is more costly due to ...
Working Paper
The 2023 Banking Turmoil and the Bank Term Funding Program
We use high-frequency data to examine the effectiveness of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) in supporting the liquidity positions of vulnerable banks during the March 2023 banking turmoil. We uncover three key findings. First, our high-frequency data confirm that banks with high reliance on uninsured deposits and large unrealized losses on securities holdings suffered larger deposit outflows at the onset of the episode. Second, the BTFP played an outsized role in meeting these outflows at banks with larger securities losses, reflecting the at-par valuation of securities collateral at ...