Search Results
Report
Financial amplification mechanisms and the Federal Reserve's supply of liquidity during the crisis
The small decline in the value of mortgage-related assets relative to the large total losses associated with the financial crisis suggests the presence of financial amplification mechanisms, which allow relatively small shocks to propagate through the financial system. We review the literature on financial amplification mechanisms and discuss the Federal Reserve's interventions during different stages of the crisis in light of this literature. We interpret the Fed's early-stage liquidity programs as working to dampen balance sheet amplifications arising from the positive feedback between ...
Speech
The implementation of current asset purchases
Remarks at the Annual Meeting with Primary Dealers, New York City.
Report
How "unconventional" are large-scale asset purchases? The impact of monetary policy on asset prices
This paper examines the impact of large-scale asset purchases (LSAP) on U.S. asset prices (nominal and inflation-indexed bonds, stocks, and U.S. dollar spot exchange rates) using an event study with intraday data. The surprise component of LSAP announcements is identified from Financial Times articles. Estimation results show that the LSAP news has economically large and highly significant effects on asset prices, even after controlling for the surprise component of the Fed's conventional target rate decision and communication about its future path of policy. This study documents that the ...
Speech
Federal Reserve lending disclosure
Testimony of Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., and Scott G. Alvarez, General Counsel of the Board of Governors, before the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.
Journal Article
Robust capital regulation
Regulators and markets can find the balance sheets of large financial institutions difficult to penetrate, and they are mindful of how undercapitalization can create incentives to take on excessive risk. This study proposes a novel framework for capital regulation that addresses banks' incentives to take on excessive risk and leverage. The framework consists of a special capital account in addition to a core capital requirement. The special account would accrue to a bank's shareholders as long as the bank is solvent, but would pass to the bank's regulators?rather than its creditors?if the ...
Speech
Asset bubbles and the implications for central bank policy
Remarks at The Economic Club of New York, New York City.
Journal Article
Liquid assets and expenditure plans of farm operators
Report
Financial intermediary balance sheet management
Conventional discussions of balance sheet management by nonfinancial firms take the set of positive net present value (NPV) projects as given, which in turn determines the size of the firm?s assets. The focus is on the composition of equity and debt in funding such assets. In contrast, the balance sheet management of financial intermediaries reveals that it is equity that behaves like the predetermined variable, and the asset size of the bank or financial intermediary is determined by the degree of leverage that is permitted by market conditions. The relative stickiness of equity reveals ...
Working Paper
Modelling the MIB30 implied volatility surface. Does market efficiency matter?
We analyze the volatility surface vs. moneyness and time to expiration implied by MIBO options written on the MIB30, the most important Italian stock index. We specify and fit a number of models of the implied volatility surface and find that it has a rich and interesting structure that strongly departs from a constant volatility, Black-Scholes benchmark. This result is robust to alternative econometric approaches, including generalized least squares approaches that take into account both the panel structure of the data and the likely presence of heteroskedasticity and serial correlation in ...
Working Paper
Measuring financial asset return and volatility spillovers, with application to global equity markets
The authors provide a simple and intuitive measure of interdependence of asset returns and/or volatilities. In particular, they formulate and examine precise and separate measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers. The authors framework facilitates study of both noncrisis and crisis episodes, including trends and bursts in spillovers, and both turn out to be empirically important. In particular, in an analysis of 19 global equity markets from the early 1990s to the present, they find striking evidence of divergent behavior in the dynamics of return spillovers vs. volatility ...