Search Results
Report
Taking orders and taking notes: dealer information sharing in financial markets
The use of order flow information by financial firms has come to the forefront of the regulatory debate. Central to this discussion is whether a dealer who acquires information by taking client orders can share that information. We explore how information sharing affects dealers, clients, and issuer revenues in U.S. Treasury auctions. Because one cannot observe alternative information regimes, we build a model, calibrate it to auction results data, and use it to quantify counterfactuals. We estimate that yearly auction revenues with full information sharing (with clients and between dealers) ...
Journal Article
Supervising large, complex financial institutions: what do supervisors do?
The supervision of large, complex financial institutions is one of the most important, but least understood, activities of the Federal Reserve. Supervision entails monitoring and oversight to assess whether firms are engaged in unsafe or unsound practices, and to ensure that firms take appropriate action to correct such practices. It is distinct from regulation, which involves the development and promulgation of the rules under which firms operate. This article brings greater transparency to the Federal Reserve?s supervisory activities by considering how they are structured, staffed, and ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: What Do Banking Supervisors Do?
In most developed economies, banking is among the most regulated and supervised sectors. While 'regulation' and 'supervision' are often used interchangeably, these two activities are distinct. Banking supervision is a complement to regulation, but its scope is much broader than simply ensuring that an institution is in compliance with regulation. Despite the importance of supervision, information about it is often limited, both because of the heavy reliance upon banks' confidential information and because many supervisory activities and actions are themselves confidential. In a recently ...
Discussion Paper
The Sensitivity of Long-Term Interest Rates: A Tale of Two Frequencies
The sensitivity of long-term interest rates to short-term interest rates is a central feature of the yield curve. This post, which draws on our Staff Report, shows that long- and short-term rates co-move to a surprising extent at high frequencies (over daily or monthly periods). However, since 2000, they co-move far less at lower frequencies (over six months or a year). We discuss potential explanations for this finding and its implications for the transmission of monetary policy.
Discussion Paper
The Puzzling Pre-FOMC Announcement “Drift”
For many years, economists have struggled to explain the ?equity premium puzzle??the fact that the average return on stocks is larger than what would be expected to compensate for their riskiness. In this post, which draws on our recent New York Fed staff report, we deepen the puzzle further. We show that since 1994, more than 80 percent of the equity premium on U.S. stocks has been earned over the twenty-four hours preceding scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements (which occur only eight times a year)?a phenomenon we call the pre-FOMC announcement ?drift.?
Discussion Paper
Reasonable Seasonals? Seasonal Echoes in Economic Data after COVID-19
Seasonal adjustment is a key statistical procedure underlying the creation of many economic series. Large economic shocks, such as the 2007-09 downturn, can generate lasting seasonal echoes in subsequent data. In this Liberty Street Economics post, we discuss the prospects for these echo effects after last year’s sharp economic contraction by focusing on the payroll employment series published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). We note that seasonal echoes may lead the official numbers to overstate actual changes in payroll employment modestly between March and July of this year ...
Discussion Paper
A Peek behind the Curtain of Bank Supervision
Since the financial crisis, bank regulatory and supervisory policies have changed dramatically both in the United States (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) and abroad (Third Basel Accord). While these shifts have occasioned much debate, the discussion surrounding supervision remains limited because most supervisory activity? both the amount of supervisory attention and the demands for corrective action by supervisors?is confidential. Drawing on our recent staff report ?Parsing the Content of Bank Supervision,? this post provides a peek behind the scenes of bank ...
Discussion Paper
The Housing Boom and the Decline in Mortgage Rates
During the pandemic, national home values and housing activity soared as mortgage rates declined to historic lows. Under the canonical “user cost” house price model, home values are held to be very sensitive to interest rates, especially at low interest rate levels. A calibration of this model can account for the house price boom with the observed decline in interest rates. But empirically, we find that home values are nowhere near as sensitive to interest rates as the user cost model predicts. This lower sensitivity is also found in prior economic research. Thus, the historical ...
Report
Parsing the content of bank supervision
We measure bank supervision using the database of supervisory issues, known as matters requiring attention or immediate attention, raised by Federal Reserve examiners to banking organizations. The volume of supervisory issues increases with banks? asset size, especially for the largest and most complex banks, and decreases with profitability and the quality of the loan portfolio. Stressed banks are faster at resolving issues, but all else equal, resolving new issues takes longer the more issues a bank faces, which may suggest capacity constraints in addressing multiple supervisory issues. ...
Discussion Paper
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part Two
In our previous post, we presented evidence suggesting that labor market indicators provide the most reliable information for dating the U.S. business cycle. In this post, we further develop the case. In fact, the unemployment rate has provided an almost perfect record of distinguishing the beginning of recessions in the post-war U.S. economy. We also show that using more granular labor market data, such as by region or industry, also provides valuable information about the state of the business cycle.