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Working Paper
The Federal Reserve’s Response to the 2023 Banking Turmoil: The Bank Term Funding Program
The Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) was an emergency liquidity facility set up by the Federal Reserve in March 2023 following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank which experienced a classic bank run driven by weak fundamentals. This paper provides an in-depth discussion of the design and implementation of the BTFP and presents some evidence on program outcomes. It also quantifies how the lending terms compare to those of the Discount Window—the Federal Reserve’s main standing liquidity facility. The BTFP successfully acted as a backstop source of funding for depository institutions with ...
Working Paper
The Fragility of Perfectly Safe Digital Money
Digital money differs from previous forms of money in an important way: it unbundles trust. Instead of relying on a trustworthy institution to settle payments, it relies on decentralized verification, whose cost is priced separately through congestion-sensitive gas fees. This arrangement creates a novel fragility from the interaction of two opposing forces: network externalities, which make digital money more valuable as adoption rises, and congestion fees, which make it more costly to use. We show that these forces generate strategic complementarities in redemption decisions and can create ...
Working Paper
A study of U.S. monetary policy implementation: demand for reserves on a period average basis
This paper provides new estimates of banks' demand for excess reserve balances on a period average basis. Consistent with theoretical work, we find that the demand for excess depends critically on uncertainty of flows in and out of reserve accounts. We also document the variability of demand for excess reserve balances by institution size, evaluate different models for forecasting demand for excess on a period average basis, and report the forecasting performance of each of these models. Finally, we present analysis of the period of financial turmoil seen over the year since August, 2007.
Working Paper
Whither the liquidity effect: the impact of Federal Reserve Open Market Operations in recent years
Previous research indicated that the daily liquidity effect, or the change in the federal funds rate associated with an exogenous change in Fed balances, varies with several factors including the day of the maintenance period. In this paper, we examine the data over the recent period of increased Federal Reserve transparency and find that the liquidity effect stabilized across days of the maintenance period. Rather, the liquidity effect may be a function of the uncertainty about banks' end-of-day balances. Moreover, we find that increased transparency led to a larger liquidity effect on the ...
Working Paper
The mechanics of a graceful exit: interest on reserves and segmentation in the federal funds market
To combat the financial crisis that intensified in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve injected a substantial amount of liquidity into the banking system. The resulting increase in reserve balances exerted downward price pressure in the federal funds market, and the effective federal funds rate began to deviate from the target rate set by the Federal Open Market Committee. In response, the Federal Reserve revised its operational framework for implementing monetary policy and began to pay interest on reserve balances in an attempt to provide a floor for the federal funds rate. Nevertheless, ...
Working Paper
The first line of defense: the discount window during the early stages of the financial crisis
This paper develops a theoretical model of trading in the federal funds market that captures characteristics of discount window borrowing and the federal funds market during the first year of the financial crisis, including the narrowing of the spread between the discount rate and the target rate; the increased incidence of high-rate trading; and the decline in participation in the federal funds market. The model shows that differences in stigma of borrowing from the discount window across banks can cause the federal funds rate to rise, even when the spread between the discount rate and the ...
Working Paper
Analyzing Federal Reserve asset purchases: from whom does the Fed buy?
Asset purchases have become an important monetary policy tool of the Federal Reserve in recent years. To date, most studies of the Federal Reserve's asset purchases have tried to measure the interest rate effects of the policies. Several papers provide evidence that these programs do have important effects on longer-term market interest rates. The theory of how asset purchases work, however, is less well developed. Some of the empirical studies point to "preferred habitat" models in which investors do not have the same objectives, and therefore prefer to hold different types and maturities ...
Working Paper
Take it to the Limit : The Debt Ceiling and Treasury Yields
We use the 2011 and 2013 U.S. debt limit impasses to examine the extent to which investors react to a heightened possibility of financial contagion. To do so, we first model the response of yields on government debt to a potential debt limit "breach." We then demonstrate empirically that yields on all Treasuries rose by 4 to 8 basis points during both impasses, while excess yields on bills at risk of delayed principal payments were significantly larger in 2013. Perhaps counterintuitively, our model suggests market participants placed a lower probability on financial contagion resulting from ...
Working Paper
Paper or plastic? the effect of time on the use of check and debit cards at grocery stores
Time is a significant cost of conducting transactions, and theoretical models predict that transactions costs significantly affect the type of media of exchange buyers use. However, there is little empirical work documenting the magnitude of this effect. This paper uses grocery store scanner data to examine how time affects consumer choices of checks and debit cards. On average, check transactions take thirty percent longer than debit card transactions. This time difference is a significant factor in the choice to use a debit card over a check and offers empirical evidence for transactions ...
Working Paper
Families' use of payment instruments during a decade of change in the U.S. payment system
In the U.S., the share of payments made "electronically"--with credit cards, debit cards, and direct payments--grew from 25 percent in 1995 to over 50 percent in 2002 (BIS, 2004). This paper frames this aggregate change in the context of individual behavior. Family level data indicate that the share of families using or holding these instruments also increased over the same period. The personal characteristics that predict use and holdings are relatively constant over time. Furthermore, the results indicate that the aggregate change may be correlated with a greater incidence in ...