Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 10.
(refine search)
Report
Uncovering covered interest parity: the role of bank regulation and monetary policy
We analyze the factors underlying the recent deviations from covered interest parity. We show that these deviations can be explained by tighter post-crisis bank capital regulations that made the provision of foreign exchange swaps more costly. Moreover, the recent monetary policy and related interest rate divergence between the United States and other major foreign countries has led to a surge in demand for swapping low interest rate currencies into the U.S. dollar. Given the higher bank balance sheet costs resulting from these regulatory changes, the increased demand for U.S. dollars in the ...
Report
Stress testing effects on portfolio similarities among large US Banks
We use an expansive regulatory loan-level dataset to analyze how the portfolios of the largest US banks have evolved since 2011. In particular, we analyze how the commercial and industrial and commercial real estate loan portfolios have changed in response to stress-testing requirements stipulated in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. We find that the largest US banks, which are subject to stress testing, have become more similar since the current form of the stress testing was implemented in 2011. We also find that banks with poor stress test results tend to adjust their portfolios in a way that makes ...
Report
The Great Leverage 2.0? A Tale of Different Indicators of Corporate Leverage
Many policymakers have expressed concerns about the rise in nonfinancial corporate leverage and the risks this poses to financial stability, since (1) high leverage raises the odds of firms becoming a source of adverse shocks, and (2) high leverage amplifies the role of firms in propagating other adverse shocks. This policy brief examines alternative indicators of leverage, focusing especially on the somewhat disparate signals they send regarding the current state of indebtedness of nonfinancial corporate businesses. Even though the aggregate nonfinancial corporate debt-to-income ratio is at ...
Working Paper
U. S. monetary policy and emerging market credit cycles
Foreign banks? lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated primarily in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle, EME borrowers face a 32-percentage-point greater increase in the volume of loans issued by foreign banks than borrowers from developed markets face, with a similarly large effect upon reversal of the U.S. monetary policy stance. This result is robust across different geographical regions and industries, and holds for non-U.S. ...
Working Paper
The pricing of FX forward contracts: micro evidence from banks’ dollar hedging
We use transaction-level data on foreign exchange (FX) forward contracts for the period 2014 through 2016 in conjunction with supervisory balance sheet information to study the drivers of banks? dollar hedging costs. Comparing contracts of the same maturity that are initiated during the same hour of the same day, we find large heterogeneity in banks? hedging costs. We show that these costs (i) are higher for banks with a larger FX funding gap, (ii) depend on banks? FX funding composition in terms of the source (interbank versus retail) and rollover structure (long-term versus short-term), ...
Working Paper
Relationship lending in the interbank market and the price of liquidity
We empirically investigate the effect that relationship lending has on the availability and pricing of interbank liquidity. Our analysis is based on a daily panel of unsecured overnight loans between 1,079 distinct German bank pairs from March 2006 to November 2007, a period that includes the 2007 liquidity crisis that marked the beginning of the 2007/08 global financial crisis. We find that (i) relationship lenders are more likely to provide liquidity to their closest borrowers, (ii) particularly opaque borrowers obtain liquidity at lower rates when borrowing from their relationship lenders, ...
Working Paper
The dynamic factor network model with an application to global credit risk
We introduce a dynamic network model with probabilistic link functions that depend on stochastically time-varying parameters. We adopt the widely used blockmodel framework and allow the high-dimensional vector of link probabilities to be a function of a low-dimensional set of dynamic factors. The resulting dynamic factor network model is straightforward and transparent by nature. However, parameter estimation, signal extraction of the dynamic factors, and the econometric analysis generally are intricate tasks for which simulation-based methods are needed. We provide feasible and practical ...
Working Paper
Monetary policy and global banking
Global banks use their global balance sheets to respond to local monetary policy. However, sources and uses of funds are often denominated in different currencies. This leads to a foreign exchange (FX) exposure that banks need to hedge. If cross?currency flows are large, the hedging cost increases, diminishing the return on lending in foreign currency. We show that, in response to domestic monetary policy easing, global banks increase their foreign reserves in currency areas with the highest interest rate, while decreasing lending in these markets. We also find an increase in FX hedging ...
Working Paper
International financial integration, crises, and monetary policy: evidence from the euro area interbank crises
We analyze how financial crises affect international financial integration, exploiting euro area proprietary interbank data, crisis and monetary policy shocks, and variation in loan terms to the same borrower on the same day by domestic versus foreign lenders. Crisis shocks reduce the supply of crossborder liquidity, with stronger volume effects than pricing effects, thereby impairing international financial integration. On the extensive margin, there is flight to home ? but this is independent of quality. On the intensive margin, however, GIPS-headquartered debtor banks suffer in the Lehman ...
Working Paper
Output Spillovers from U.S. Monetary Policy: The Role of International Trade and Financial Linkages
We estimate that U.S. monetary policy has sizable spillover effects on global economic activity. In response to a surprise increase in the federal funds rate of 25 basis points, real output in our sample of 44 countries declines on average by 0.9% after three years. We find that international trade is a more important factor than international finance in explaining these spillovers. In particular, countries with a high share of exports and imports in output have 79% larger responses than countries with a low share, whereas we do not find significant heterogeneity depending on a country’s ...