Search Results
Working Paper
Reserve Balances, the Federal Funds Market and Arbitrage in the New Regulatory Framework
We study developments in reserve balances and the federal funds market in the context of two banking regulatory changes: the widening of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) assessment base and the introduction of the Basel III leverage ratio. Using a novel data set that includes FDIC fees and balance sheet data for depository institutions, we find that, as most foreign banks were not subject to the FDIC fee, they absorbed increasing amounts of reserve balances. Furthermore, foreign banks experienced positive and improving conditions for arbitraging between borrowing reserve ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Implementation with an Ample Supply of Reserves
Methods of monetary policy implementation continue to change. The level of reserve supply---scarce, abundant, or somewhere in between---has implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of an implementation regime. The money market events of September 2019 highlight the need for an analytical framework to better understand implementation regimes. We discuss major issues relevant to the choice of an implementation regime, using a parsimonious framework and drawing from the experience in the United States since the 2007-09 financial crisis. We find that the optimal level of reserve supply ...
Working Paper
An Empirical Study of Trade Dynamics in the Fed Funds Market
We use minute-by-minute daily transaction-level payments data to document the cross-sectional and time-series behavior of the estimated prices and quantities negotiated by commercial banks in the fed funds market. We study the frequency and volume of trade, the size distribution of loans, the distribution of bilateral fed funds rates, and the intraday dynamics of the reserve balances held by commercial banks. We find evidence of the importance of the liquidity provision achieved by commercial banks that act as de facto intermediaries of fed funds.
Working Paper
Excess reserves and monetary policy normalization
REVISED 8/14/16: In response to the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve resorted to several unconventional policies that drastically altered the landscape of the federal funds market. The current environment, in which depository institutions are flush with excess reserves, has forced policymakers to design a new operational framework for monetary policy implementation. We provide a parsimonious model that captures the key features of the current federal funds market, along with the instruments introduced by the Federal Reserve to implement its target for the federal funds rate. We use this ...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy Implementation With an Ample Supply of Reserves
Methods of monetary policy implementation continue to change. The level of reserve supply—scarce, abundant, or somewhere in between—has implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of an implementation regime. The money market events of September 2019 highlight the need for an analytical framework to better understand implementation regimes. We discuss major issues relevant to the choice of an implementation regime, using a parsimonious framework and drawing from the experience in the United States since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. We find that the optimal level of reserve supply ...
Working Paper
A Sequential Bargaining Model of the Fed Funds Market with Excess Reserves
We model bargaining between non-bank investors and heterogeneous bank borrowers in the federal funds market. The analysis highlights how the federal funds rate will respond to movements in other money market interest rates in an environment with elevated levels of excess reserves. The model predicts that the administered rate offered through the Federal Reserve's overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility influences the fed funds rate even when the facility is not used. Changes in repo rates pass through to the federal funds rate, but by less than one-for-one. We calibrate the model to ...
Working Paper
Cyberattacks and Financial Stability: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
This paper studies the effects of a unique multi-day cyberattack on a technology service provider (TSP). Using several confidential daily datasets, we identify and quantify first- and second-round effects of the event. For banks using relevant services of the TSP, the attack impaired their ability to send payments over Fedwire, even though the Federal Reserve extended the time they had to submit payments. This impairment (first-round effect) caused other banks to receive fewer payments (second-round effect), leaving them at risk of having too few reserves to send their own payments (a ...