Search Results
Working Paper
Credit-Market Sentiment and the Business Cycle
Using U.S. data from 1929 to 2015, we show that elevated credit-market sentiment in year t-2 is associated with a decline in economic activity in years t and t+1. Underlying this result is the existence of predictable mean reversion in credit-market conditions. When credit risk is aggressively priced, spreads subsequently widen. The timing of this widening is, in turn, closely tied to the onset of a contraction in economic activity. Exploring the mechanism, we find that buoyant credit-market sentiment in year t-2 also forecasts a change in the composition of external finance: Net debt ...
Working Paper
Banks as Patient Fixed Income Investors
We examine the business model of traditional commercial banks in the context of their co-existence with shadow banks. While both types of intermediaries create safe "money-like" claims, they go about this in very different ways. Traditional banks create safe claims with a combination of costly equity capital and fixed income assets that allows their depositors to remain "sleepy": they do not have to pay attention to transient fluctuations in the mark-to-market value of bank assets. In contrast, shadow banks create safe claims by giving their investors an early exit option that allows them ...
Working Paper
Dollar funding and the lending behavior of global banks
A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale dollar funding, while raising more of their euro funding through insured retail deposits, the shock leads to a greater withdrawal of dollar funding. Banks can borrow in euros and swap into dollars to make up for the dollar shortfall, but this may lead to violations of covered interest parity (CIP) when there is limited capital to ...
Journal Article
Cyclical implications of the Basel II capital standards
This article reviews the economic efficiency implications of the Basel II capital standards. The authors argue that the mapping from measures of loan risk to capital requirements should not be time-invariant, but rather should be allowed to vary with business cycle conditions. They also attempt to assess empirically how much cyclicality in capital requirements might be induced by the current Basel II proposal. They find that the degree of cyclicality can be substantial.
Conference Paper
Liquidity regulation
Journal Article
Does bank capital matter for monetary transmission? commentary
Paper for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled Financial Innovation and Monetary Transmission
