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Working Paper
Central banks as lender of last resort: experiences during the 2007-2010 crisis and lessons for the future
During the 2007-2010 financial crisis, central banks accumulated a vast amount of experience in acting as lender of last resort. This paper reviews the various ways that central banks provided emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) during the crisis, and discusses issues for the design of ELA arising from that experience. In a number of ways, the emergency liquidity assistance since 2007 has largely adhered to Bagehot's dictums of lending freely against good collateral to solvent institutions at a penalty rate. But there were many exceptions to these rules. Those exceptions illuminate the ...
Working Paper
The aggregate change in shares and the level of stock prices
The average change in shares of equity is negatively correlated with estimates of the equity premium calculated using the dividend-ratio model of Campbell and Shiller, as well as with a variant of the model written in terms of the earnings-price ratio. This correlation is consistent with corporations issuing equity when it is a relatively inexpensive source of finance and repurchasing equity when it is a relatively good investment. However, when the retirement of shares resulting from mergers are included, the average change in shares is no longer significantly correlated with the equity ...
Journal Article
Criteria for central bank assets: lessons from pre-ECB Germany
The Deutsche Bundesbank was formed in July 1957, when the two-tier central bank system set up following World War II was consolidated. That previous system had been established by the Allies in imitation of the Federal Reserve System and consisted of independent regional banks (the Land Central Banks) and a governing body. Under the new system, the Land Central Banks became offices of the Bundesbank. As was true under the previous system, the Bundesbank was made independent of the federal cabinet by law and was particularly proscribed from lending to the public sector except for short terms. ...
Journal Article
Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 1996
U.S. commercial banks had another very good year in 1996. Profits posted strong growth, preserving the high levels of return on equity and return on assets that have prevailed over the past four years. Helping to boost profits were continued strong growth of interest-earning assets, a slight widening of the net interest margin, significant gains in noninterest income, and continued containment of noninterest expenses. Return on assets edged up despite a slight increase in provisioning for loan and lease losses relative to assets. Delinquency and charge-off rates stayed low for business loans ...
Working Paper
Interpreting the significance of lagged interest rate in estimated monetary policy rules
Many researchers have found that the lagged interest rate enters estimated monetary policy rules with overwhelming significance. However, a recent paper by Rudebusch (2002) argues that the lagged interest rate is not a fundamental component of the U.S. policy rule, and that its significance arises from the omission of serially correlated variables from the policy rule. This paper demonstrates that, contrary to Rudebusch's claims, these two hypotheses can be directly distinguished in the estimation of the policy rule. Our findings indicate that while serially correlated omitted variables may ...
Journal Article
Proposed Revision to the Federal Reserve's Discount Window Lending Programs
The Board of Governors' Regulation A currently authorizes the Federal Reserve Banks to operate three main discount window programs: adjustment credit, extended credit, and seasonal credit. On May 17, 2002, the Board published for public comment a proposed amendment to Regulation A that would establish two new discount window programs called primary credit and secondary credit as replacements for adjustment and extended credit. Primary credit would be available for very short terms, ordinarily overnight, to depository institutions that are in generally sound financial condition. Secondary ...
Journal Article
Recent Changes to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Terms of Business Lending
The Federal Reserve's quarterly Survey of Terms of Business Lending, which has been conducted for more than twenty years, collects information on interest rates and other characteristics of commercial bank business loans. The survey has been changed from time to time to recognize innovations in bank lending practices and to improve the measurement of the desired information. The most recent changes took effect with the May 1997 survey. The major improvement was the addition of an item measuring loan risk. In addition, the reporting panel, which had been limited to domestically chartered ...
Working Paper
Using policy intervention to identify financial stress
This paper describes the construction of a financial stress index. This stress index differs from other indexes in that it incorporates the co-movement and volatility of financial series as well as the levels of the series. Our index also uses past experience more than others to guide the assessment about which characteristics of the data suggest financial stress exists. In addition to describing the construction of our financial stress index, we spend some time discussing issues relevant to the general construction of stress indexes.
Journal Article
Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 1998
The performance of the U.S. commercial banking industry remained strong in 1998, but slipped a bit from the remarkable results of recent years. Both the return on assets and the return on equity edged down last year, although they remained high by historical standards. While supported by growth in fee income, profitability was damped by a large decline in the rates banks earned on their interest-bearing assets relative to the rates they paid on their liabilities, and also by higher noninterest costs, especially merger and restructuring expenses. Profitability was uneven last year across bank ...
Journal Article
Recent changes to the Federal Reserve's survey of terms of business lending
The Federal Reserve's quarterly Survey of Terms of Business Lending, which has been conducted for more than twenty years, collects information on interest rates and other characteristics of commercial bank business loans. The survey has been changed from time to time to recognize innovations in bank lending practices and to improve the measurement of the desired information. The most recent changes took effect with the May 1997 survey. The major improvement was the addition of an item measuring loan risk. In addition, the reporting panel, which had been limited to domestically chartered ...