Search Results
Working Paper
Shortages of small change in early Argentina
In this note I review evidence suggesting that shortages of small change occurred in the territory of Argentina during the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. For the colonial period (until 1810) the main pieces of evidence are: (i) the widespread use of informal means of payment, (ii) the difficulties faced in retiring from circulation low quality subsidiary coins, and (iii) the numerous official resolutions banning the exporting of fractional money from the colonies. For the period from 1810 to 1825, the episodes surrounding the introduction of copper coins ...
Working Paper
The Fed's Discount Window in "Normal" Times
We study transaction-level data of bank borrowings at the Federal Reserve’s discount window from 2010 to 2019. We merge these data with quarterly information on bank balance sheets and income statements. To aid in the interpretation of our empirical analysis, we also develop a detailed model of the decision of banks to borrow from various sources, including the discount window. The objective is to contribute to a better understanding of the reasons why banks use the discount window during “normal” times—periods of relative calm in financial markets. Consistent with our model, we find ...
Briefing
Bank Lending in the Time of COVID
We discuss the evolution of bank lending during the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Large domestic banks and foreign-related banks increased significantly their lending to businesses during these months, much of it through existing lines of credit. Small domestic banks played an active role in providing paycheck protection loans. In terms of consumer credit, the stock of banks' residential mortgage loans did not change substantially, and the amount of bank credit flowing directly to consumers decreased.
Working Paper
Bank runs and institutions : the perils of intervention
Governments typically respond to a run on the banking system by temporarily freezing deposits and by rescheduling payments to depositors. Depositors may even be required to demonstrate an urgent need for funds before being allowed to withdraw. We study ex post efficient policy responses to a bank run and the ex ante incentives these responses create. Given that a run is underway, the efficient response is typically not to freeze all remaining deposits, since this would impose heavy costs on individuals with urgent withdrawal needs. Instead, (benevolent) government institutions would allow ...
Briefing
Discount Window Lending: Policy Trade-offs and the 1985 BoNY Computer Failure
On November 21, 1985, the Bank of New York (BoNY) suffered a software failure that left it unable to redeliver securities it had received from other institutions as an intermediary. The result of the failure was that the bank sought and received $22.6 billion in discount window lending from the New York Fed, a record-setting amount. The episode presents a case study for considering when discount window lending and similar interventions are justified as a matter of efficiency, as well as the need for policymakers to take account of possible moral hazard that may lead to inadequate safeguards ...
Working Paper
The Fed's Discount Window in "Normal" Times
We study new transaction-level data of discount window borrowing in the U.S. between 2010 and 2017, merged with quarterly data on bank financial con- ditions (balance sheet and revenue). The objective is to improve our under- standing of the reasons for why banks use the discount window during periods outside financial crises. We also provide a model of the decision of banks to borrow at the window, which is helpful for interpreting the data. We find that decisions to gain access and to borrow at the discount window are meaning- fully correlated with some relevant banks' characteristics and ...
Working Paper
Avoiding the inflation tax
Working Paper
Banking and the political support for dollarization
In this paper we study dollarization as a commitment device that the Central Bank could use to avoid getting involved in an undesirable banking-sector bailout. We show how a political process could induce an equilibrium outcome that differs from the one that a benevolent Central Bank would want to implement. Dollarization then could be used to restore the economy to the benevolent outcome. In so doing though, political support for dollarization becomes essential. For our benchmark case, dollarization does not have enough support to be actually implemented. But when we study the interaction ...
Working Paper
Discussion on \"Scarcity of Safe Assets, Inflation, and the Policy Trap\" by Andolfatto and Williamson
This discussion was prepared for the 84th Meeting of the Carnegie-Rochester-NYU Conference Series on Public Policy "Monetary Policy: An Unprecedented Predicament" held on November 14-15, 2014, at Carnegie Mellon University.
Briefing
Large Excess Reserves and the Relationship between Money and Prices
As a consequence of the Federal Reserve's response to the financial crisis of 2007?08 and the Great Recession, the supply of reserves in the U.S. banking system increased dramatically. Historically, over long horizons, money and prices have been closely tied together, but over the past decade, prices have risen only modestly while base money (reserves plus currency) has grown substantially. A macroeconomic model helps explain this behavior and suggests some potential limits to the Fed's ability to increase the size of its balance sheet indefinitely while remaining consistent with its ...