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Working Paper
Efficient tests for autoregressive unit roots in panel data
In this paper the class of admissable tests for unit roots in panel data sets of autoregressive, Gaussian time series will be partially characterized. Using this characterization, several recently suggested tests are shown to be inadmissable. Since the sufficient statistic for this testing problem is multidimensional, there is no uniformly most powerful test; however, in light of the inadmissability result, a new test is proposed that appears to do well relative to existing tests. The test is parameterized in a way that allows the choice of different directional deviations from the null ...
Discussion Paper
The Cleared Bilateral Repo Market and Proposed Repo Benchmark Rates
As described in a recent statement and blog post, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), in cooperation with the Office of Financial Research (OFR), is considering the publication of several new benchmark rates for overnight Treasury general collateral repurchase agreement (repo) transactions in order to enhance market transparency and efficiency by improving the quality and breadth of repo market information available to the public. This note sheds light on another important segment of the overnight repo market – the segment of the bilateral repo market cleared by FICC – based on ...
Working Paper
U.S. Unconventional Monetary Policy and Transmission to Emerging Market Economies
We investigate the effects of U.S. unconventional monetary policies on sovereign yields, foreign exchange rates, and stock prices in emerging market economies (EMEs), and we analyze how these effects depend on country-specifc characteristics. We find that, although EME asset prices, mainly those of sovereign bonds, responded strongly to unconventional monetary policy announcements, these responses were not outsized with respect to a model that takes into account each country's time-varying vulnerability to U.S. interest rates affected by monetary policy shocks.
Discussion Paper
The Fed Funds Market During the Quantitative Tightening of 2017-19
The effective federal funds rate (EFFR) declined by about 10 basis points on every month end from 2016 to February 2018. Then, in March 2018, this pattern suddenly stopped (Figure 1). This Note discusses the dynamics behind the federal funds market, including its relationship with repo markets, to explain this change and to better understand the behavior of money markets during the period of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening between October 2017 and September 2019.
Discussion Paper
What Happens on Quarter-Ends in the Repo Market
Over the course of the past two years, repo rates have begun to rise modestly around quarter-ends and, to a lesser extent, on some month-ends. As seen in Figure 1, after some time of the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) remaining below or near the Overnight Reverse Repurchase (ON RRP) rate and with no or very little movement around quarter-ends, SOFR rose 7 basis points above the ON RRP rate at the end of March 2023, when banks' demand for liquid assets increased following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and has temporarily increased over each quarter-end since then.
Working Paper
Options, sunspots, and the creation of uncertainty
We present a model in which the addition of an option market leads to sunspot equilibria in an economy which has no sunspot equilibrium before the market is introduced. This phenomenon occurs because the payoff of an option contract is contingent upon market prices, and while prices are taken as exogenous by individuals within the economy they are endogenous to the economy as a whole. Our results provide robust counterexamples to the two most prevalent views of options markets in finance. Following Ross [1976], it is often assumed that the addition of option contracts to an incomplete markets ...
Working Paper
Market power and inflation
This paper examines the extent to which a decline in market power could have contributed to the general decline in inflation rates experienced in developed countries during the 1990s.
Working Paper
Interest on excess reserves as a monetary policy instrument: the experience of foreign central banks
This paper reviews the experience of eight major foreign central banks with policy interest rates comparable to the interest rate on excess reserves paid by the Federal Reserve. We pursue two main lines of inquiry: 1) To what extent have these policy interest rates been lower bounds for short-term market rates, and 2) to what extent has tightening that included increasing these policy rates been achieved without reliance on reductions in reserves or other deposits held at the central bank? The foreign experience suggests that policy rate floors can be effective lower bounds for market rates, ...
Working Paper
Loss aversion in a consumption/savings model
Psychological evidence indicates that a person's well-being depends not only on his current consumption of goods, but on a reference level determined by his past consumption. According to Kahneman and Tversky's (1979) prospect theory, people care much more about losses relative to their reference points than about gains, are risk-averse over gains, and risk-loving over losses. We define these characteristics as loss aversion. We incorporate an extended form of loss aversion into a simple two-period savings model. Our main conclusion is that, when there is sufficient income uncertainty, a ...