Search Results
Working Paper
The Federal Home Loan Bank System: the lender of next-to-last resort?
The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. This paper first documents the significant role played by the FHLB System at the outset of the ongoing financial crisis and then provides evidence about the uses of these funds by their bank and thrift members. We then identify the trade-offs faced by FHLB member-borrowers when choosing between accessing the FHLB System or the Federal Reserve's discount window during ...
Conference Paper
Has the development of the structured credit market affected the cost of corporate debt?
The rapid development of structured credit markets permits investors to assume credit risk that in aggregate is frequently many times larger than the amount of debt actually issued by an underlying borrower. Given the apparent increased appetite for corporate credit risk by investors, and the additional information revealed in the structured credit markets, a natural question to ask is whether the development of these markets has been associated with a reduction in the cost of debt financing, giving firms an opportunity to operate with greater leverage. Using Markit data identifying when ...
Conference Paper
On the role of firm balance sheets in the transmission mechanism
Journal Article
The Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility
The securitization markets for consumer and business asset-backed securities (ABS) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), which supply a substantial share of credit to consumers and small businesses, came to a near-complete halt in the fall of 2008, as investors responded to a drastic decline in funding liquidity by curtailing their participation in these markets. In response, the Federal Reserve introduced the TALF program, which extended term loans collateralized by securities to buyers of certain high-quality ABS and CMBS, as part of a broad array of emergency liquidity measures ...
Journal Article
Shadow banking
The rapid growth of the market-based financial system since the mid-1980s has changed the nature of financial intermediation. Within the system, ?shadow banks? have served a critical role, especially in the run-up to the recent financial crisis. Shadow banks are financial intermediaries that conduct maturity, credit, and liquidity transformation without explicit access to central bank liquidity or public sector credit guarantees. This article documents the institutional features of shadow banks, discusses the banks? economic roles, and analyzes their relation to the traditional banking ...
Report
Shadow banking: a review of the literature
We provide an overview of the rapidly evolving literature on shadow credit intermediation. The shadow banking system consists of a web of specialized financial institutions that conduct credit, maturity, and liquidity transformation without direct, explicit access to public backstops. The lack of such access to sources of government liquidity and credit backstops makes shadow banks inherently fragile. Much of shadow banking activities is intertwined with the operations of core regulated institutions such as bank holding companies and insurance companies, thus creating a source of systemic ...
Report
Borrowers' financial constraints and the transmission of monetary policy: evidence from financial conglomerates
Building on recent evidence concerning the functioning of internal capital markets in financial conglomerates, we conduct a novel test of the balance-sheet channel of monetary policy. Specifically, we investigate how the response of lending to monetary policy differs across small banks that are affiliated with the same bank holding company but operate in different geographical areas. These banks face similar constraints in accessing internal and external sources of funds, but have different pools of borrowers. Because they typically concentrate their lending with small local businesses, we ...
Report
Defaults and losses on commercial real estate bonds during the Great Depression era
We employ a unique data set of public commercial real estate (CRE) bonds issued during the Great Depression era (1920-32) to determine their frequency of default and total loss given default. Default rates on these bonds far exceeded those originated in subsequent periods, driven in part by the greater economic stress of the Depression as well as the lower level of financial sophistication of investors and structures that prevailed in 1920-32. Our results confirm that making loans with higher loan-to-value ratios results in higher rates of default and loss. They also support the business ...
Report
The Federal Home Loan Bank System: the lender of next-to-last resort?
The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. In this paper, we document the significant role played by the FHLB System at the onset of the ongoing financial crises and then provide evidence on the uses of these funds by the System's bank and thrift members. Next, we identify the trade-offs faced by member-borrowers when choosing between accessing the FHLB System or the Federal Reserve's Discount Window during ...
Report
Has the credit derivatives swap market lowered the cost of corporate debt?
There have been widespread claims that credit derivatives such as the credit default swap (CDS) have lowered the cost of firms' debt financing by creating for investors new hedging opportunities and information. However, these instruments also give banks an opaque means to sever links to their borrowers, thus reducing lender incentives to screen and monitor. In this paper, we evaluate the effect that the onset of CDS trading has on the spreads that underlying firms pay at issue when they seek funding in the corporate bond and syndicated loan markets. Employing matched-sample methods, we find ...