Search Results
Working Paper
The evolution of a financial crisis: panic in the asset-backed commercial paper market
The $350 billion contraction in the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in the last five months of 2007 played a central role in transforming concerns about the credit quality of mortgage-related assets into a global financial crisis. This paper attempts to better understand why the substantial contraction in ABCP occurred by measuring and analyzing runs on ABCP programs over the period from August 2007 through December 2007. While it has been suggested that commercial paper programs, like commercial banks, may be prone to runs, we are the first to conduct a comprehensive empirical ...
Speech
Introductory remarks for the Panel on Regulating Financial Markets: lessons from crisis management
Introductory Remarks for the Panel Discussion Sponsored by the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute and the Economic Club of Minnesota at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Speech
Fixing wholesale funding to build a more stable financial system
Remarks at the New York Bankers Association's 2013 Annual Meeting & Economic Forum, The Waldorf Astoria, New York City.
Working Paper
How effective were the Federal Reserve emergency liquidity facilities?: evidence from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility
Following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, short-term credit markets were severely disrupted. In response, the Federal Reserve implemented new and unconventional facilities to help restore liquidity. Many existing analyses of these interventions are confounded by identification problems because they rely on aggregate data. Two unique micro datasets allow us to exploit both time series and cross-sectional variation to evaluate one of the most unusual of these facilities - the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF). The AMLF extended ...
Journal Article
Fed confronts financial crisis by expanding its role as lender of last resort
The current recession has deepened because of shrinking credit flows from banks, nonbank lenders and securities markets. This contrasts with the early 1990s, when new bonds and commercial paper cushioned a bank credit crunch, and with the high-tech investment bust of the early 2000s, when steady bank lending lessened the impact of receding bond and equity finance markets. ; This time, breakdowns in key credit markets posed great risks to the financial system and the broader economy. The Federal Reserve responded with unprecedented measures, expanding its role as lender of last resort in an ...
Journal Article
The Federal Reserve’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility
Established in the wake of Lehman Brothers? bankruptcy to stabilize severe disruptions in the commercial paper market, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) allowed the Federal Reserve to act as a lender of last resort for issuers of commercial paper, thereby effectively addressing temporary liquidity distortions and alleviating the severe funding stress that threatened to further exacerbate the financial crisis. In doing so, the CPFF can be considered a noteworthy model of liquidity provision in a market-based financial system, where maturity transformation occurs outside of the ...
Speech
Financial market turmoil: the Federal Reserve and the challenges ahead
Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Conference 2009, New York City.
Working Paper
Did the commercial paper funding facility prevent a Great Depression-style money market meltdown?
This paper analyzes how risk premia?and other factors affecting the comparative advantages of security-funded versus deposit-funded short-run debt?altered the relative use of debt funded by securities markets since the early-1960s and the relative use of commercial paper during the recent financial crisis. Results indicate that lower risk premia, higher information costs, and reserve requirement costs induce less relative use of commercial paper and short-run debt funded by securities markets. This paper also finds that Federal Reserve interventions in the money market helped prevent the ...
Journal Article
Directly placed finance company paper
Working Paper
Preventing a repeat of the money market meltdown of the early 1930s
This paper analyzes the meltdown of the commercial paper market during the Great Depression, and relates those findings to the recent financial crisis. Theoretical models of financial frictions and information problems imply that lenders will make fewer noncollateralized loans or investments and relatively more extensions of collateralized finance in times of high risk premiums. This study investigates the relevance of such theories to the Great Depression by analyzing whether the increased use of a collateralized form of business lending (bankers acceptances) relative to that of ...