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Working Paper
Do federal funds futures need adjustment for excess returns? a state-dependent approach
This paper utilizes a Markov-switching framework to model excess returns in federal funds futures contracts. This framework identifies a high-volatility state where excess returns are large, positive, and volatile and a low-volatility state where excess returns have a lower volatility and are small in absolute value. Federal funds futures rates require adjustment for excess returns only in the high-volatility state. Intermeeting rate cuts of the federal funds rate target always correspond with the high-volatility regime and can explain much of the variation in excess returns. This paper also ...
Working Paper
Monetary policy, secrecy, and federal funds rate behavior
The behavior of the Federal Reserve System can be characterized as secretive with respect to its control of monetary aggregates. One common justification for this secrecy is that markets will overreact to information, causing undue variability in interest rates. However, the consequences of keeping policy objectives hidden has received little formal attention. This paper takes an initial step by examining the variability of the federal funds rate and total reserves under nonborrowed reserve targeting. The major result is that the disclosure of operating procedures will generally increase the ...
Working Paper
A federal funds rate equation
This paper presents evidence that indicates that U.S. interest rate policy during most of the 1980s can be described by a reaction function in which the federal funds rate rises if real GDP rises above trend GDP, if actual inflation accelerates, or if the long-term bond rate rises. Money growth when included in the reaction function is significant, indicating that money also influenced policy. The results presented here however indicate that in recent years the Fed has discounted the leading indicator properties of money. In contrast, the bond rate has been a key determinant of the funds rate ...
Journal Article
Alternative arrangements for the distribution of intraday liquidity
In July 2006, the Federal Reserve will end its provision of free daylight credit to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), financial services corporations created by Congress to establish a secondary market in mortgages and other consumer loans. To meet their payments to investors, the GSEs can use a wide variety of alternative funding arrangements. While such arrangements can in theory distribute liquidity efficiently, a decline in the intraday funds in circulation following the Fed's move may lead to some slowing in payments by both the GSEs and commercial banks.
Journal Article
Large-dollar payment flows from New York
Working Paper
Overnight interbank loan markets
This paper investigates transactions and interest rates on brokered and direct trades in federal funds, Eurodollar transactions, and repurchase agreements, all of which are used by banks in overnight funding. We expand on earlier work on calendar-day effects in these markets, investigating also volumes of funding in recent years. Our data include daily trades in federal funds reported by major brokers and also records of uncollateralized transactions over the wire transfer system operated by the Federal Reserve. We find that the share of the overnight interbank loan market represented by ...
Working Paper
Extracting the expected path of monetary policy from futures rates
Federal funds and eurodollar futures contracts are among the most useful instruments for deriving expectations of the future path of monetary policy. However, reading policy expectations from those instruments is complicated by the presence of risk premia. This paper demonstrates how to extract the expected policy path under the assumption that risk premia are constant over time, and under a simple model that allows risk premia to vary. In the latter case, the risk premia are identified under the assumption that policy expectations level out after a long enough horizon. The results provide ...
Journal Article
Has Forward Guidance Been Effective?
A. Lee Smith and Thealexa Becker compare forward guidance announcements with changes in the effective federal funds rate and find the two policy measures have had similar macroeconomic effects.
Journal Article
Federal funds : instrument of Federal Reserve policy
An abstract for this article is not available