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Working Paper
Close but not a central bank: The New York Clearing House and issues of clearing house loan certificates
The paper examines the New York Clearing House (NYCH) as a lender of last resort by looking at clearing-house-loan-certificate borrowing during five banking panics of the National Banking Era (1863?1913). In that system, adequate aggregate liquidity provision was passive and dependent upon member bank borrowing. We document bank borrowing behavior using bank-level data for clearing-house loan certifi cates issued to NYCH member banks. The historical record reveals that the large New York City banks behaved in ways that resembled those of a central bank in 1884 and in 1890, but less so in the ...
Journal Article
The Term Auction Facility’s effectiveness in the financial crisis of 2007–09
During the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, financial markets experienced tremendous strains, and the cost of short-term funding rose sharply. In response, several central banks around the world created new lending facilities to quickly provide liquidity to the banking sector and improve market functioning. The list includes the European Central Bank, Bank of England, Bank of Canada and Swiss National Bank. On Dec. 12, 2007, the Federal Reserve established its version?the term auction facility (TAF). ; Researchers have yet to reach a consensus on the effectiveness of such facilities. ...
Journal Article
Alternatives to Libor in consumer mortgages
Many adjustable rate mortgages in the United States are indexed to Libor. While the accuracy of this rate has recently been called into question, another issue affecting U.S. borrowers has become evident since the onset of the financial crisis. Specifically, many U.S. consumers with Libor-based loans may have been hit with substantially higher payments when their loans reset during the financial crisis than if those loans had been tied to a Treasury rate. We investigate several alternative reference rates for consumer loans and estimate their payment effects on a large sample of Libor-linked ...
Discussion Paper
Who’s Borrowing and Lending in the Fed Funds Market Today?
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) communicates the stance of monetary policy through a target range for the federal funds rate, which is the rate set in the market for uncollateralized short-term lending and borrowing of central bank reserves in the U.S. Since the global financial crisis, the market for federal funds has changed markedly. In this post, we take a closer look at who is currently trading in the federal funds market, as well as the reasons for their participation.
Report
A model of liquidity hoarding and term premia in inter-bank markets
Financial crises are associated with reduced volumes and extreme levels of rates for term inter-bank loans, reflected in the one-month and three-month Libor. We explain such stress by modeling leveraged banks? precautionary demand for liquidity. Asset shocks impair a bank?s ability to roll over debt because of agency problems associated with high leverage. In turn, banks hoard liquidity and decrease term lending as their rollover risk increases over the term of the loan. High levels of short-term leverage and illiquidity of assets lead to low volumes and high rates for term borrowing. In ...
Report
Bank liquidity, interbank markets, and monetary policy
A major lesson of the recent financial crisis is that the ability of banks to withstand liquidity shocks and to provide lending to one another is crucial for financial stability. This paper studies the functioning of the interbank lending market and the optimal policy of a central bank in response to both idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. In particular, we consider how the interbank market affects a bank's choice between holding liquid assets ex ante and acquiring such assets in the market ex post. We show that a central bank should use different tools to manage different types of shocks. ...
Report
Liquidity hoarding
Banks hold liquid and illiquid assets. An illiquid bank that receives a liquidity shock sells assets to liquid banks in exchange for cash. We characterize the constrained efficient allocation as the solution to a planner?s problem and show that the market equilibrium is constrained inefficient, with too little liquidity and inefficient hoarding. Our model features a precautionary as well as a speculative motive for hoarding liquidity, but the inefficiency of liquidity provision can be traced to the incompleteness of markets (due to private information) and the increased price volatility that ...
Journal Article
Global trends in large-value payments
Globalization and technological innovation are two major forces affecting the financial system and its infrastructure. Perhaps nowhere are these trends more apparent than in the internationalization and automation of payments. While the effects of globalization and technological innovation are most obvious on retail payments, the influence is equally impressive on wholesale, or interbank, payments. Given the importance of payments and settlement systems to the smooth operation and resiliency of the financial system, it is important to understand the potential consequences of these ...
Working Paper
On the welfare properties of fractional reserve banking
Superseded by Working Paper 15-20. Monetary economists have long recognized a tension between the benefits of fractional reserve banking, such as the ability to undertake more profitable (long-term) investment opportunities, and the difficulties associated with fractional reserve banking, such as the risk of insolvency for each bank. The goal of this paper is to show that a specific form of private bank coalition (a joint-liability arrangement) allows the members of the banking system to engage in fractional reserve banking in such a way that the solvency of each member bank is completely ...