Search Results
Working Paper
Preventing Bank Runs
Diamond and Dybvig (1983) is commonly understood as providing a formal rationale for the existence of bank-run equilibria. It has never been clear, however, whether bank-run equilibria in this framework are a natural byproduct of the economic environment or an artifact of suboptimal contractual arrangements. In the class of direct mechanisms, Peck and Shell (2003) demonstrate that bank-run equilibria can exist under an optimal contractual arrangement. The difficulty of preventing runs within this class of mechanism is that banks cannot identify whether withdrawals are being driven by ...
Briefing
Central Bank Digital Currencies and Regulatory Alternatives: the Case for Stablecoins
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have been in the spotlight as the Federal Reserve and other central banks explore introducing them. At the same time, stablecoins are also growing in popularity, and many people including politicians and regulators have started discussing how to properly regulate their issuance and use. In this article, I discuss the question of whether a regulatory framework for stablecoins — where regulated banks can issue stablecoins backed 100 percent by deposits at the central bank — could serve as an alternative to issuing CBDCs.
Briefing
GameStop, AMC and the Self-Fulfilling Beliefs of Stock Buyers
The recent stock market gyrations of GameStop and AMC Entertainment illustrate that companies' fates can sometimes hinge on self-fulfilling beliefs. Pessimistic expectations can raise the specter of bankruptcy, while optimistic expectations can allow for survival and eventual success. We show how it is sometimes possible for small coalitions of buyers — such as those that formed on the online forum Reddit — to tip the balance in favor of an optimistic scenario. By doing so, a coalition can reap large profits and fundamentally improve a company's prospects.
Working Paper
Is Money Essential? An Experimental Approach
Working Paper
Financial Fragility and Over-the-Counter Markets
This paper studies the interaction between financial fragility and over-the-counter markets. In the model, the financial sector is composed of a large number of investors divided into different groups, which are interpreted as financial institutions, and a large number of dealers. Financial institutions and dealers trade assets in an over-the-counter market la Duffie et al. (2005) and Lagos and Rocheteau (2009). Investors are subject to privately observed preference shocks, and financial institutions use the balanced team mechanism, proposed by Athey and Segal (2013), to implement an ...
Briefing
Sovereign CDS Dealers as Market Stabilizers
Economists at the Richmond Fed analyze the role of dealer-provided liquidity in sovereign credit default swap markets. Using newly available data from the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, they track the positions held by large dealers during crises in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Argentina. The researchers find that large dealers tended to increase their provision of insurance as risk increased during those episodes — a finding that is consistent with the notion that they tend to act as market stabilizers during times of turmoil.
Briefing
How Post-2008 Financial Regulations Impacted Corporate Bond Liquidity
We review empirical findings regarding the impact of post-2008 financial regulations on the liquidity of corporate bond markets in the U.S. We first show that traditional measures of market liquidity improved in recent years. At the same time, the cost of illiquidity also increased. We then discuss findings showing that — after the regulations were implemented — dealer capital commitment, trade frequency and size decreased, while dealer bid-ask spread increased. The increase in dealer bid-ask spread is compensated by a change in the composition of the liquidity provision. Liquidity is ...
Working Paper
Preventing bank runs
Diamond and Dybvig (1983) is commonly understood as providing a formal rationale for the existence of bank-run equilibria. It has never been clear, however, whether bank-run equilibria in this framework are a natural byproduct of the economic environment or an artifact of suboptimal contractual arrangements. In the class of direct mechanisms, Peck and Shell (2003) demonstrate that bank-run equilibria can exist under an optimal contractual arrangement. The difficulty of preventing runs within this class of mechanism is that banks cannot identify whether withdrawals are being driven by ...
Journal Article
Sovereign CDS Market: The Role of Dealers in Credit Events
In this paper, we study the credit default swaps (CDS) position of the main dealers in the CDS market close to credit events of sovereign countries. We focus on the credit events of three countries that have faced significant financial distress in the past decade: Argentina, Venezuela, and Ukraine. After introducing the historical background of each country, we find that CDS dealers, defined as the top ten traders of CDS in their respective countries, tend to sell sovereign CDS (hold more negative or less positive positions) when yields/CDS spreads go up. This finding suggests that dealers ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Debt and Credit Default Swaps
ow do credit default swaps (CDS) affect sovereign debt markets? The answer depends crucially on trading frictions, risk-sharing, arbitrage violations, and spillovers from secondary to primary markets. We propose a sovereign default model where investors trade bonds and CDS over the counter via directed search. CDS affect bond prices through several channels. First, CDS act as a synthetic bond. Second, CDS reduce bond-investing risks, allowing exposure to be unwound. Third, CDS availability increases trading profitability, which induces entry and reduces trading costs. Last, these direct ...