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Briefing
The Role of Central Bank Lending in the Conduct of Monetary Policy
Central banks can extend credit in pursuit of different policy objectives, two of which are discussed in this Economic Brief. First, lending can be used to achieve interest rate control. Second, lending can be used to provide liquidity insurance. A narrow view of central bank lending emphasizes the first objective, in which subsidized credit to targeted market participants is not seen as essential. A broader view considers targeted lending as sometimes necessary. Which perspective is favored is largely, though not wholly, dependent on judgments about the prevalence of frictions that inhibit ...
Working Paper
Aggregate demand management with multiple equilibria
We study optimal government policy in an economy where (i) search frictions create a coordination problem and generate multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria and (ii). The government finances the provision of a public good by taxing trade. The government must choose the tax rate before it knows which equilibrium will obtain, and therefore an important part of the problem is determining how the policy will affect the equilibrium selection process. We show that when the equilibrium selection rule is based on the concept of risk dominance, higher tax rates make coordination on the Pareto-superior ...
Briefing
Perspectives on the Banking Turmoil of 2023
The banking turmoil of March 2023 was a significant incident in the U.S. financial system that threatened to create a general macroeconomic problem. There were multiple factors at play that explain what happened. In this article, I discuss some of those factors in detail to gain a more complete understanding of why and how the turmoil happened and the way policy addressed it.
Working Paper
Optimal Banking Contracts and Financial Fragility
We study a finite-depositor version of the Diamond-Dybvig model of financial intermediation in which the bank and all depositors observe withdrawals as they occur. We derive the constrained efficient allocation of resources in closed form and show that this allocation provides liquidity insurance to depositors. The contractual arrangement that decentralizes this allocation resembles a standard bank deposit in that it has a demand able debt-like structure. When withdrawals are unusually high, however,depositors who withdraw relatively late experience significant losses. This contractual ...
Working Paper
Bank runs and institutions : the perils of intervention
Governments typically respond to a run on the banking system by temporarily freezing deposits and by rescheduling payments to depositors. Depositors may even be required to demonstrate an urgent need for funds before being allowed to withdraw. We study ex post efficient policy responses to a bank run and the ex ante incentives these responses create. Given that a run is underway, the efficient response is typically not to freeze all remaining deposits, since this would impose heavy costs on individuals with urgent withdrawal needs. Instead, (benevolent) government institutions would allow ...
Briefing
Reforming Money Market Mutual Funds: A Difficult Assignment
The money market mutual fund (MMMF) industry was one of many segments of the financial sector that experienced significant volatility during the 2007?08 financial crisis. Reform efforts have been underway to make the industry more resilient to shocks, but proposals have been controversial. This Economic Brief explores some of the key issues and sheds light on why reforming this industry has been so challenging.
Working Paper
Discussion on \"Scarcity of Safe Assets, Inflation, and the Policy Trap\" by Andolfatto and Williamson
This discussion was prepared for the 84th Meeting of the Carnegie-Rochester-NYU Conference Series on Public Policy "Monetary Policy: An Unprecedented Predicament" held on November 14-15, 2014, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Working Paper
A Simple General Equilibrium Model of Large Excess Reserves
I study a non-stochastic, perfect foresight, general equilibrium model with a banking system that may hold large excess reserves when the central bank pays interest on reserves. The banking system also faces a capital constraint that may or may not be binding. When the rate of interest on reserves equals the market rate, if the quantity of reserves is large and bank capital is not scarce, the price level is indeterminate. However, for a large enough level of reserves, the bank capital constraint becomes binding and the price level moves one to one with the quantity of reserves.
Briefing
Projecting the Evolution of the Fed's Balance Sheet
As the Fed embarks on balance sheet policy normalization, there is natural interest in understanding the projected evolution of the Fed's asset portfolio over the next three to four years. Several important assumptions are needed to be able to predict the path of the balance sheet. Based exclusively on public information, we use alternative sets of plausible assumptions to construct and analyze several different scenarios for the future of this critical policy-relevant lever.
Discussion Paper
Search, money, and inflation under private information
I study a version of the Lagos-Wright (2003) model of monetary exchange in which buyers have private information about their tastes and sellers make take-it-or-leave-it-offers (i.e., have the power to set prices and quantities). The introduction of imperfect information makes the existence of monetary equilibrium a more robust feature of the environment. In general, the model has a monetary steady state in which only a proportion of the agents hold money. Agents who do not hold money cannot participate in trade in the decentralized market. The proportion of agents holding money is endogenous ...