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Report
Risk appetite and exchange Rates
We present evidence that the growth of U.S.-dollar-denominated banking sector liabilities forecasts appreciations of the U.S. dollar, both in-sample and out-of-sample, against a large set of foreign currencies. We provide a theoretical foundation for a funding liquidity channel in a global banking model where exchange rates fluctuate as a function of banks? balance sheet capacity. We estimate prices of risk using a cross-sectional asset pricing approach and show that the U.S. dollar funding liquidity forecasts exchange rates because of its association with time-varying risk premia. Our ...
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Macro risk premium and intermediary balance sheet quantities
The macro risk premium measures the threshold return for real activity that receives funding from savers. We base our argument in this paper on the relationship between the macro risk premium and the growth of financial intermediaries' balance sheets. The spare capacity of their balance sheets determines the intermediaries' risk appetite, which in turn determines the real projects that receive funding and, hence, the supply of credit. Monetary policy affects risk appetite by changing the ability of intermediaries to leverage their capital. We estimate the time-varying risk appetite of ...
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Which financial frictions? Parsing the evidence from the financial crisis of 2007-09
We provide an overview of data requirements necessary to monitor repurchase agreements (repos) and securities lending (sec lending) markets for the purposes of informing policymakers and researchers about firm-level and systemic risk. We start by explaining the functioning of these markets, and argue that it is crucial to understand the institutional arrangements. Data collection is currently incomplete. A comprehensive collection should include six characteristics of repo and sec lending trades at the firm level: principal amount, interest rate, collateral type, haircut, tenor, and ...
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Monetary cycles, financial cycles, and the business cycle
One of the most robust stylized facts in macroeconomics is the forecasting power of the term spread for future real activity. The economic rationale for this forecasting power usually appeals to expectations of future interest rates, which affect the slope of the term structure. In this paper, we propose a possible causal mechanism for the forecasting power of the term spread, deriving from the balance sheet management of financial intermediaries. When monetary tightening is associated with a flattening of the term spread, it reduces net interest margin, which in turn makes lending less ...
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Financial intermediary leverage and value at risk
We study a contracting model for the determination of leverage and balance sheet size for financial intermediaries that fund their activities through collateralized borrowing. The model gives rise to two features: First, leverage is procyclical in the sense that leverage is high when the balance sheet is large. Second, leverage and balance sheet size are both determined by the riskiness of assets. For U.S. investment banks, we find empirical support for both features of our model, that is, leverage is procyclical, and both leverage and balance sheet size are determined by measured risks. In a ...
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Liquidity and leverage
In a financial system in which balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes appear immediately as changes in net worth, prompting financial intermediaries to adjust the size of their balance sheets. We present evidence that marked-to-market leverage is strongly procyclical and argue that such behavior has aggregate consequences. Changes in dealer repurchase agreements (repos) -the primary margin of adjustment for the aggregate balance sheets of intermediaries - forecast changes in financial market risk as measured by the innovations in the Chicago Board Options ...
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Financial intermediary balance sheet management
Conventional discussions of balance sheet management by nonfinancial firms take the set of positive net present value (NPV) projects as given, which in turn determines the size of the firm?s assets. The focus is on the composition of equity and debt in funding such assets. In contrast, the balance sheet management of financial intermediaries reveals that it is equity that behaves like the predetermined variable, and the asset size of the bank or financial intermediary is determined by the degree of leverage that is permitted by market conditions. The relative stickiness of equity reveals ...
Report
Precautionary Demand and Liquidity in Payment Systems
In large-value real-time gross settlement payment systems, banks rely heavily on incoming funds to finance outgoing payments. Such reliance necessitates a high degree of coordination and synchronization. We construct a model of a payment system calibrated for the U.S. Fedwire system and examine the impact of realistic disruptions motivated by the recent financial crisis. In such settings, individually cautious behavior can have a significant and detrimental impact on the overall functioning of the payment system through a multiplier effect. Our results quantify the mutually reinforcing nature ...
Conference Paper
Macroprudential policies in open emerging economies