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Discussion Paper
Real Inventory Slowdowns
Inventory investment plays a central role in business cycle fluctuations. This post examines whether inventory investment amplifies or dampens economic fluctuations following a tightening in financial conditions. We find evidence supporting an amplification mechanism. This analysis suggests that inventory accumulation will be a drag on economic activity this year but provide a boost in 2020.
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The revolving door and worker flows in banking regulation
Drawing on a large sample of publicly available curricula vitae, this paper traces the career transitions of federal and state U.S. banking regulators and provides basic facts on worker flows between the regulatory and private sectors resulting from the revolving door. We find strong countercyclical net worker flows into regulatory jobs, driven largely by higher gross outflows into the private sector during booms. These worker flows are also driven by state-specific banking conditions as measured by local banks? profitability, asset quality, and failure rates. The regulatory sector seems to ...
Discussion Paper
The Low Volatility Puzzle: Are Investors Complacent?
In recent months, some analysts and policymakers have raised concerns about the unusually low level of stock market volatility. For example, in the June Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes ?a few participants expressed concern that subdued market volatility, coupled with a low equity premium, could lead to a buildup of risks to financial stability.? In this post, we review this concern and find the evidence on investor complacency is mixed. On one hand, we present a view suggesting that historical volatility may have been abnormally high, rather than current volatility being ...
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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) ...
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Understanding mortgage spreads
Most mortgages in the U.S. are securitized in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Yield spreads on these securities are thus a key determinant of homeowners? funding costs. We study variation in MBS spreads over time and across securities, and document a cross-sectional smile pattern in MBS spreads with respect to the securities? coupon rates. We propose non-interest-rate prepayment risk as a candidate driver of MBS spread variation and present a new pricing model that uses ?stripped? MBS prices to identify the contribution of this prepayment risk to the spread. The pricing model finds ...
Discussion Paper
Is U.S. Monetary Policy Seasonal?
Many economic time series display periodic and predictable patterns within each calendar year, generally referred to as seasonal effects. For example, retail sales tend to be higher in December than in other months. These patterns are well-known to economists, who apply statistical filters to remove seasonal effects so that the resulting series are more easily comparable across months. Because policy decisions are based on seasonally adjusted series, we wouldn’t expect the decisions to exhibit any seasonal behavior. Yet, in this post we find that the Federal Reserve has been much more ...
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Mortgage-Backed Securities
This paper reviews the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market, with a particular emphasis on agency residential MBS in the United States. We discuss the institutional environment, security design, MBS risks and asset pricing, and the economic effects of mortgage securitization. We also assemble descriptive statistics about market size, growth, security characteristics, prepayment, and trading activity. Throughout, we highlight insights from the expanding body of academic research on the MBS market and mortgage securitization.
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
Reading the Tea Leaves of the U.S. Business Cycle—Part One
The study of the business cycle—fluctuations in aggregate economic activity between times of widespread expansion and contraction—is one of the foremost pursuits in macroeconomics. But even distinguishing periods of expansion and recession can be challenging. In this post, we discuss different conceptual approaches to dating the business cycle, study their past performance for the U.S. economy, and highlight the informativeness of labor market indicators.
Discussion Paper
In a Relationship: Evidence of Underwriters’ Efforts to Stabilize the Share Price in the Facebook IPO
Stocks are usually offered in initial public offerings (IPOs) at a discount, leading to large first-day IPO returns. When there is a risk of a negative initial return, underwriters are known to actively support the aftermarket price of a stock through buying activities. In this post, we look at the trading book for Facebook stock on May 18, 2012, the day of its highly anticipated IPO. Using what we call a ?large integer?price bid? identification assumption to indirectly infer which investors are bidding, we find evidence of significant trading by underwriters seeking to stabilize the stock?s ...