Search Results
Working Paper
Is bank debt special for the transmission of monetary policy? Evidence from the stock market
We combine existing balance sheet and stock market data with two new datasets to study whether, how much, and why bank lending to firms matters for the transmission of monetary policy. The first new dataset enables us to quantify the bank dependence of firms precisely, as the ratio of bank debt to total assets. We show that a two standard deviation increase in the bank dependence of a firm makes its stock price about 25 percent more responsive to monetary policy shocks. We explore the channels through which this effect occurs, and find that the stock prices of bank-dependent firms that borrow ...
Report
The time-varying price of financial intermediation in the mortgage market
The U.S. mortgage market links homeowners with savers all over the world. In this paper, we ask how much of the flow of money from savers to borrowers goes to the intermediaries that facilitate these transactions. Based on a new methodology and a new administrative data set, we find that the price of intermediation, measured as a fraction of the loan amount at origination, is large?142 basis points on average over the 2008-14 period. At daily frequencies, intermediaries pass on price changes in the secondary market to borrowers in the primary market almost completely. At monthly frequencies, ...
Working Paper
House Price Responses to Monetary Policy Surprises: Evidence from the U.S. Listings Data
Existing literature documents that house prices respond to monetary policy surprises with a significant delay, taking years to reach their peak response. We present new evidence of a much faster response. We exploit information contained in listings for the residential properties for sale in the United States between 2001 and 2019 from the CoreLogic Multiple Listing Service Dataset. Using high-frequency measures of monetary policy shocks, we document that a one standard-deviation contractionary monetary policy surprise lowers housing list prices by 0.2–0.3 percent within two weeks—a ...
Speech
Money markets at a crossroads: policy implementation at a time of structural change: remarks at the Master of Applied Economics' Distinguished Speaker Series, University of California, Los Angeles
Remarks at the Master of Applied Economics' Distinguished Speaker Series, University of California, Los Angeles.
Working Paper
The time-varying price of financial intermediation in the mortgage market
The U.S. mortgage market links homeowners with savers all over the world. In this paper, we ask how much of the flow of money from savers to borrowers actually goes to the intermediaries that facilitate these transactions. Based on a new methodology and a new administrative dataset, we find that the price of intermediation, measured as a fraction of the loan amount at origination, is large?142 basis points on average over the 2008?2014 period. At daily frequencies, intermediaries pass on the price changes in the secondary market to borrowers in the primary market almost completely. At monthly ...
Discussion Paper
The Sensitivity of Long-Term Interest Rates: A Tale of Two Frequencies
The sensitivity of long-term interest rates to short-term interest rates is a central feature of the yield curve. This post, which draws on our Staff Report, shows that long- and short-term rates co-move to a surprising extent at high frequencies (over daily or monthly periods). However, since 2000, they co-move far less at lower frequencies (over six months or a year). We discuss potential explanations for this finding and its implications for the transmission of monetary policy.
Report
Firms’ Cash Holdings and Monetary Policy Transmission
Liquidity, particularly cash holdings, may serve as an important cushion for firms to absorb macroeconomic shocks such as interest rate increases so that these shocks have only minimal effects on their operations, at least in the short term. For example, to finance their investments, firms with high levels of cash may not have to tap so deep into debt financing, the cost of which relates closely to interest rates. Understanding the role of corporate cash holdings is therefore paramount to formulating appropriate monetary policy in the current environment. This brief informs the ongoing policy ...
Report
Rate-Amplifying Demand and the Excess Sensitivity of Long-Term Rates
Long-term nominal interest rates are surprisingly sensitive to high-frequency (daily or monthly) movements in short-term rates. Since 2000, this high-frequency sensitivity has grown even stronger in U.S. data. By contrast, the association between low-frequency changes (at six- or twelve-month horizons) in long- and short-term rates, which was also strong before 2000, has weakened substantially. This puzzling post-2000 pattern arises because increases in short rates temporarily raise the term premium component of long-term yields, leading long rates to temporarily overreact to changes in short ...
Report
How do mortgage refinances affect debt, default, and spending? Evidence from HARP
We use quasi-random access to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to identify the causal effect of refinancing a mortgage on borrower balance sheet outcomes. We find that on average, refinancing into a lower-rate mortgage reduced borrowers' default rates on mortgages and nonmortgage debts by about 40 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Refinancing also caused borrowers to expand their use of debt instruments, such as auto loans, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), and other consumer debts that are proxies for spending. All told, refinancing led to a net increase in debt equal to ...
Working Paper
MoNK: Mortgages in a New-Keynesian Model
We propose a tractable framework for monetary policy analysis in which both short- and long-term debt affect equilibrium outcomes. This objective is motivated by observations from two literatures suggesting that monetary policy contains a dimension affecting expected future interest rates and thus the costs of long-term financing. In New-Keynesian models, however, long-term loans are redundant assets. We use the model to address three questions: what are the effects of statement vs. action policy shocks; how important are standard New- Keynesian vs. cash flow effects in their transmission; ...