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Discussion Paper
Standing Repo Facilities, Then and Now
Recently there have been discussions, both within the FOMC and more broadly, about whether the FOMC should set up a standing repo facility. Such a facility would allow banks to sell safe assets (U.S. Treasury securities) to the Fed, with the assurance of subsequent repurchase, in unlimited quantities at an administered rate. This is not a new idea. In fact, a similar facility was implemented in 1683by the Bank of Amsterdam, the leading central bank of the time, and operated for more than a century afterward. In this article, we describe the motivations, operations, and limitations of the Bank ...
Journal Article
Should the United States Issue a Central Bank Digital Currency? Lessons from Abroad
If the web 3.0 requires a public ledger–based payments platform, central bank digital currency (CBDC) is unlikely to provide the digital currency needed to fuel the smart contracts of tomorrow. This payments dilemma can be solved by a hybrid digital currency that includes a new type of bank deposit as well as regulated private stablecoins, both of which clear and settle on a next-generation public ledger created and managed as a joint venture between banks and private stablecoin issuers. With this payments platform under Federal Reserve oversight, there would be no need for the Federal ...
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.
Journal Article
Standing Repo Facilities, Then and Now
Recently there have been discussions, both within the FOMC and more broadly, about whether the FOMC should set up a standing repo facility. Such a facility would allow banks to sell safe assets (U.S. Treasury securities) to the Fed, with the assurance of subsequent repurchase, in unlimited quantities at an administered rate. This is not a new idea. In fact, a similar facility was implemented in 1683 by the Bank of Amsterdam, the leading central bank of the time, and operated for more than a century afterward. In this article, we describe the motivations, operations, and limitations of the ...
Journal Article
The design of wholesale payments networks: the importance of incentives
Most people are familiar with retail payments systems such as checks and credit cards. Less familiar are wholesale payments systems, which consist of electronic networks used for sending large sums among banks. A feature common to all wholesale networks is that settlement is carried out by exchange of funds held in banks' reserve accounts at a central bank, though the rules for settlement vary. This article considers the question of what is the best design for a wholesale payments system, in particular whether it should settle on a net or a real-time gross basis, and some of the difficult ...
Journal Article
The economics of payment finality
Payment finality is critical to decentralized exchange. By specifying how the transfer of one type of claim extinguishes another, the rules governing finality minimize opportunities for default along credit chains and allocate other risks. ; The authors provide a basic analysis of finality and its role in facilitating exchange. They first present a simple, historically based model of transferable debt and finality. The discussion demonstrates the desirability of transferable debt and why rules governing payment finality are needed to sort out who will bear the losses in the event of default. ...
Working Paper
The CLS Bank: a solution to the risks of international payments settlement?
Foreign exchange transactions are subject to a unique type of settlement risk. This risk ultimately stems from the difficulty of coordinating separate settlements in two different currencies. Settlement of foreign exchange transactions through the proposed CLS ("Continuous Linked Settlement") Bank has been discussed as a potential solution to this problem. This paper describes the CLS proposal and analyzes the incentives it places on banks engaged in foreign exchange transactions. The analysis shows that while settlement through the CLS Bank may represent an improvement over current ...
Working Paper
Credit and identity theft
The quintessential crime of the information age is identity theft, the malicious use of personal identifying data. In this paper we model ?identity? and its use in credit transactions. Various types of identity theft occur in equilibrium, including ?new account fraud,? ?existing account fraud,? and ?friendly fraud.? The equilibrium incidence of identity theft represents a tradeoff between a desire to avoid costly or invasive monitoring of individuals on the one hand and the need to control transactions fraud on the other. Our results suggest that technological advances will not eliminate this ...
Working Paper
Payment system settlement and bank incentives
In this paper we consider the relative merits of net versus gross settlement of interbank payments. Net settlement economizes on the costs of holding non-interest-bearing reserves but increases moral hazard problems. The "put option" value of default under net settlement can also distort banks' investment incentives. ; Absent these distortions, net settlement dominates gross, although the optimal net settlement scheme may involve a positive probability of default. Net settlement becomes more attractive relative to gross settlement if bank assets have to be liquidated at less than book value.
Working Paper
Real-time gross settlement and the costs of immediacy
Using a neoclassical monetary model, we investigate the welfare cost of a payment system that operates as a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system. We illustrate how the cost of such systems does not ultimately derive from factors such as "payments gridlock" but instead from the credit constraints imposed by RTGS. We also investigate the welfare consequences of various approaches to the allocation of daylight credit by central banks. The two most popular approaches, collateralization and charging an administered intraday interest rate, are shown to be effective along some dimensions but ...