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Working Paper
Assessing Targeted Macroprudential Financial Regulation: The Case of the 2006 Commercial Real Estate Guidance for Banks
In January 2006, federal regulators issued guidance requiring banks with specific high concentrations of commercial real estate (CRE) loans to tighten managerial controls. This paper shows that banks with concentrations in excess of the thresholds set in the guidance subsequently experienced slower growth in their CRE portfolios than can be explained by changes in bank or economic conditions. Moreover, banks above the CRE thresholds tended to have slower commercial and industrial loan growth but faster household loan growth following issuance of the guidance. The results highlight the ...
Working Paper
The U.S. Syndicated Loan Market : Matching Data
We introduce a new software package for determining linkages between datasets without common identifiers. We apply these methods to three datasets commonly used in academic research on syndicated lending: Refinitiv LPC DealScan, the Shared National Credit Database, and S&P Global Market Intelligence Compustat. We benchmark the results of our match using results from the literature and previously matched files that are publicly available. We find that the company level matching is enhanced by careful cleaning of the data and considering hierarchical relationships. For loan level matching, a ...
Journal Article
"Future of Banking: Navigating Change” Conference Highlights Opportunities and Challenges for Community Banking
On June 5, experts from the financial industry and regulatory community gathered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. While panelists discussed challenges for community bankers, such as rising funding pressures and difficulty attracting talent, they also highlighted opportunities. As faster payments and strategic third-party relationships help level the technological playing field, community banks may be better able to differentiate themselves through relationship banking.
Journal Article
How Should Bank Supervision and Regulation Be Tailored?
Tailoring bank supervision and regulation based on characteristics such as size and complexity has generated significant discussion recently. In practice, tailoring requires well-defined criteria to set requirements and expectations. I provide several considerations for implementing tailored supervisory regimes and illustrate a tradeoff between simple, but imprecise, rules of thumb and more precise, but complex, approaches.
Journal Article
“Future of Banking: Powering Progress, Protecting Trust” Conference Explores Implications of Technological Change
On May 14, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s “Future of Banking: Powering Progress, Protecting Trust” conference brought together more than 100 community bankers to discuss how technology is changing the banking industry. Panelists covered topics ranging from digital assets, fraud, and artificial intelligence (AI) to the future of the community banking industry.
Journal Article
Jackson Hole Economic Symposium Explored Innovation in Financial Markets
The 2026 Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium brought together academics and policymakers from around the world to discuss how stablecoins, tokenization, and artificial intelligence could transform financial markets and reflect on what those changes may require of central banks and regulators.
Journal Article
How Have Banks Responded to Declining Reserve Balances?
Reserve balances have declined by more than $1 trillion since 2014, leading banks to increase their holdings of other high-quality assets to meet liquidity requirements. However, the composition of these assets varies substantially across banks, suggesting the drivers of demand for reserves are not uniform.
Journal Article
Understanding the Recent Rise in Municipal Bond Yields
In late March, investors sold off municipal bonds at a rapid pace, depressing municipal bond prices and driving up their yields relative to U.S. Treasuries. We find that this initial investor run on the municipal bond market was likely due to increased liquidity demand rather than credit concerns, making the Federal Reserve’s early actions to relieve liquidity stress effective. Going forward, however, municipal bond prices will likely reflect increased credit concerns.
Journal Article
PPP Raised Community Bank Revenue but Lowered Profitability
Community banks have played an outsized role in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), disbursing 37 percent of all PPP loans despite holding only 18 percent of outstanding bank loans. Although participation boosted community banks’ revenue by supporting asset and interest income growth, it appears to have lowered their profitability, at least initially: low interest rates and deferred fee collection on PPP loans reduced banks’ earning margins.
Journal Article
Is Bank Capital Regulation Driving Continued Use of the Overnight Reverse Repurchase (ON RRP) Facility?
Use of the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase (ON RRP) facility rose in 2022, coinciding with deposit outflows and declining reserves at commercial banks. A popular narrative suggests that regulatory capital requirements discouraged bank deposit-taking, driving up ON RRP use. However, this story neglects important contributors to the ON RRP’s surge. We find that limited money market investment opportunities, policy uncertainty, and administrative changes likely explain increased ON RRP activity.