Search Results

Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 24.

(refine search)
SORT BY: PREVIOUS / NEXT
Jel Classification:N20 

Report
Zombies at Large? Corporate Debt Overhang and the Macroeconomy

With business leverage at record levels, the effects of corporate debt overhang on growth and investment have become a prominent concern. In this paper, we study the effects of corporate debt overhang based on long-run cross-country data covering the near-universe of modern business cycles. We show that business credit booms typically do not leave a lasting imprint on the macroeconomy. Quantile local projections indicate that business credit booms do not affect the economy’s tail risks either. Yet in line with theory, we find that the economic costs of corporate debt booms rise when ...
Staff Reports , Paper 951

Working Paper
Learning from History : Volatility and Financial Crises

We study the effects of volatility on financial crises by constructing a cross-country database spanning over 200 years. Volatility is not a significant predictor of crises whereas unusually high and low volatilities are. Low volatility is followed by credit build-ups, indicating that agents take more risk in periods of low financial risk consistent with Minsky hypothesis, and increasing the likelihood of a banking crisis. The impact is stronger when financial markets are more prominent and less regulated. Finally, both high and low volatilities make stock market crises more likely, while ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2016-093

Journal Article
The Fed and Its Shadow: A Historical View

Central bank policies have always incorporated both a discretionary or active component and a passive component. Successful central banking has required a coordination of the two components. After a period of apparent dormancy, the passive component of monetary policy has emerged from the shadows and become relevant for Federal Reserve policy today.
Policy Hub , Volume 2023 , Issue 6 , Pages 32

Report
Who Can Tell Which Banks Will Fail?

We use the German Crisis of 1931, a key event of the Great Depression, to study how depositors behave during a bank run in the absence of deposit insurance. We find that deposits decline by around 20 percent during the run and that there is an equal outflow of retail and nonfinancial wholesale deposits from both ex-post failing and surviving banks. This implies that regular depositors are unable to identify failing banks. In contrast, the interbank market precisely identifies which banks will fail: the interbank market collapses for failing banks entirely but continues to function for ...
Staff Reports , Paper 1005

Working Paper
Zombies at Large? Corporate Debt Overhang and the Macroeconomy

With business leverage at record levels, the effects of corporate debt overhang on growth and investment have become a prominent concern. In this paper, we study the effects of corporate debt overhang based on long-run cross-country data covering the near universe modern business cycles. We show that business credit booms typically do not leave a lasting imprint on the macroeconomy. Quantile local projections indicate that business credit booms do not affect the economy’s tail risks either. Yet in line with theory, we find that the economic costs of corporate debt booms rise when ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2020-36

Working Paper
Sovereigns versus Banks: Credit, Crises, and Consequences

Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and worries about the risks of lax fiscal policies. However, the two may interact in important and understudied ways. This paper studies the co-evolution of public and private sector debt in advanced countries since 1870. We find that in advanced economies financial stability risks have come from private sector credit booms ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2013-37

Journal Article
The political origins of Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act

At the height of the financial crisis of 2007-09, the Federal Reserve conducted emergency lending under authority granted to it in the third paragraph of Section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act. This article explores the political and legislative origins of the section, focusing on why Congress chose to endow the central bank with such an authority. The author describes how in the initial passage of the act in 1913, Congress demonstrated its steadfast commitment to the ?real bills? doctrine in two interrelated ways: 1) by limiting what assets the Fed could purchase, discount, and use as ...
Economic Policy Review , Issue 24-1 , Pages 1-33

Working Paper
Bank Capital Redux: Solvency, Liquidity, and Crisis

Higher capital ratios are unlikely to prevent a financial crisis. This is empirically true both for the entire history of advanced economies between 1870 and 2013 and for the post-WW2 period, and holds both within and between countries. We reach this startling conclusion using newly collected data on the liability side of banks? balance sheets in 17 countries. A solvency indicator, the capital ratio has no value as a crisis predictor; but we find that liquidity indicators such as the loan-to-deposit ratio and the share of non-deposit funding do signal financial fragility, although they add ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2017-6

Working Paper
Historical Patterns of Inequality and Productivity around Financial Crises

To understand the determinants of financial crises, previous research focused on developments closely related to financial markets. In contrast, this paper considers changes originating in the real economy as drivers of financial instability. To this end, I assemble a novel data set of long-run measures of income inequality, productivity, and other macrofinancial indicators for advanced economies. I find that rising top income inequality and low productivity growth are robust predictors of crises, and their slowmoving trend components largely explain these relations. Moreover, recessions that ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2017-23

Working Paper
How Cyclical Is Bank Capital?

The alleged pro-cyclicality of bank capital (high in good times, low in bad) has received some blame for the recent financial crisis. Others blame the countercyclicality of capital regulations: too low in high times and too high in bad. To address this problem, Basel III has introduced countercyclical capital buffers for large banks. But just how cyclical is bank capital? We look at the question from several vantage points, using both detailed recent data on risk-weighted assets and several sources of annual data going back to 1834. To help understand the historical data, we provide a short ...
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1504

FILTER BY year

FILTER BY Content Type

FILTER BY Author

FILTER BY Jel Classification

G01 10 items

N10 10 items

E44 9 items

G21 7 items

E51 6 items

show more (34)

FILTER BY Keywords

PREVIOUS / NEXT