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Conference Paper
External constraints on monetary policy and the financial accelerator
This paper incorporates a financial accelerator mechanism in a small open economy macro model with money and nominal price rigidities. Our goal is to explore the connection between financial distress that feeds into the real economy and the exchange rate regime. Our principle finding is that financial accelerator effects are much stronger under fixed rates than under flexible rates (with a suitably managed monetary policy). Roughly speaking, an exchange rate peg forces the central bank to adjust the interest rate in a manner that enhances the financial distress. This occurs even when debt is ...
Report
Overnight RRP operations as a monetary policy tool: some design considerations
We review recent changes in monetary policy that have led to development and testing of an overnight reverse repurchase agreement (ON RRP) facility, an innovative tool for implementing monetary policy during the normalization process. Making ON RRPs available to a broad set of investors, including nonbank institutions that are significant lenders in money markets, could complement the use of the interest on excess reserves (IOER) and help control short-term interest rates. We examine some potentially important secondary effects of an ON RRP facility, both positive and negative, including ...
Journal Article
The macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting
Discussion Paper
Dealer Balance Sheet Capacity and Market Liquidity during the 2013 Selloff in Fixed-Income Markets
Long-term interest rates hit record-low levels in 2012 but have since increased substantially. As discussed in an earlier post, the sharpest increase occurred between May 2 and July 5 of this year, with the ten-year Treasury yield rising from 1.63 percent to 2.74 percent. During the May-July episode, market liquidity also deteriorated. Some market participants have suggested that constraints on dealer balance sheet capacity impaired liquidity during the selloff, amplifying the magnitude and speed of the rise in interest rates and volatility. In this post, we review the evolution of Treasury ...
Discussion Paper
Dealer Balance Sheet Capacity and Market Liquidity during the 2013 Selloff in Fixed Income Markets
Long-term interest rates hit record-low levels in 2012 but have since increased substantially.
Working Paper
The Demand for Short-Term, Safe Assets and Financial Stability: Some Evidence and Implications for Central Bank Policies
A number of researchers have recently argued that the growth of the shadow banking system in the years preceding the recent U.S. financial crisis was driven by rising demand for "money-like" claims--short-term, safe instruments (STSI)--from institutional investors and nonfinancial firms. These instruments carry a money premium that lowers their yields. While government securities are an important part of the supply of STSI, financial intermediaries also take advantage of this money premium when they issue certain types of low-risk, short-term debt, such as asset-backed commercial paper or ...
Journal Article
Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 2004
U.S. commercial banks continued to be highly profitable in 2004. Return on assets and return on equity declined moderately, but the economy's continued expansion and supportive financial conditions helped keep bank profits in the elevated range that has prevailed since the mid-1990s. Profits were trimmed a bit by a narrowing of banks' net interest margins as the yield curve flattened and competition put pressure on loan spreads. In addition, gains in non-interest income were less pronounced than in 2003, and non-interest expenses increased. However, the continued improvement in the overall ...
Working Paper
The magnitude and cyclical behavior of financial market frictions
We quantify the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the wedge between the cost of external and internal finance by estimating the structural parameters of a canonical debt-contracting model with informational frictions. For this purpose, we construct a new dataset that includes balance sheet information, measures of expected default risk, and credit spreads on publicly traded debt for about 900 U.S. firms over the period 1997Q1 to 2003Q3. Using nonlinear least squares, we obtain precise time-specific estimates of the bankruptcy cost parameter and consistently reject the null ...
Working Paper
Capturing the evolution of dealer credit terms related to securities financing and OTC derivatives: some initial results from the new Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms
In the period prior to the financial crisis, leverage in the financial system increased substantially. This buildup was likely facilitated by, among other factors, a loosening of credit terms related to OTC derivatives and securities financing transactions. However, little or no systematic data on these trends were available at the time. The new Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms, which was conducted for the first time in June 2010, partially fills this gap. The new survey provides qualitative information about changes in credit terms and conditions across the ...
Working Paper
The road to adopting the euro: monetary policy and exchange rate regimes in EU candidate countries
This paper examines the choice of exchange rate regime in EU candidate countries during the process of accession to the European Monetary Union (EMU). In the presence of real exchange rate appreciation due to the Balassa-Samuelson effect, candidate countries face a trade-off between trend appreciation of the nominal exchange rate and high inflation rates. In a general equilibrium model of an emerging market economy, we show that under a fixed or heavily managed exchange rate the Balassa-Samuelson effect might prevent compliance with the Maastricht inflation criterion, unless a contractionary ...