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Working Paper
Option-Implied Libor Rate Expectations across Currencies
In this paper, I study risk-neutral probability densities regarding future Libor rates denominated in British pounds, euros, and US dollars as implied by option prices. I apply Breeden and Litzenberger?s (1978) result regarding the relationship between option prices and implied probabilities for the underlying to estimate full probability density functions for future Libor rates. I use these estimates in case studies, detailing the evolution of probabalistic expectations for future Libor rates over the course of several important market events. Next, I compute distributional moments from ...
Discussion Paper
Did the Fed’s Term Auction Facility Work?
The Federal Reserve introduced the Term Auction Facility (TAF) in December 2007 to provide term loans to banks during the recent financial crisis. In this post, we report on the effectiveness of the TAF during the early stages of the crisis. We find that the TAF was associated with a decrease in the “liquidity premium,” one component of a bank’s borrowing cost. In other words, the TAF worked as intended.
Report
The effect of the Term Auction Facility on the London inter-bank offered rate
The Term Auction Facility (TAF), the first auction-based liquidity initiative by the Federal Reserve during the global financial crisis, was aimed at improving conditions in the dollar money market and bringing down the significantly elevated London interbank offered rate (Libor). The effectiveness of this innovative policy tool is crucial for understanding the role of the central bank in financial stability, but academic studies disagree on the empirical evidence of the TAF effect on Libor. We show that the disagreement arises from misspecifications of econometric models. Regressions using ...