Search Results
Discussion Paper
Primary Dealers' Behavior during the 2007-08 Crisis : Part II, Intermediation and Deleveraging
In this second of two notes we study how dealers deleverage following the 2007-2008 funding squeeze.
Report
Runs and Flights to Safety: Are Stablecoins the New Money Market Funds?
Similar to the more traditional money market funds (MMFs), stablecoins aim to provide investors with safe, money-like assets. We investigate similarities and differences between these two investment products. Like MMFs, stablecoins suffer from “flight-to-safety” dynamics: we document net flows from riskier to safer stablecoins on days of crypto-market stress and estimate a discrete “break-the-buck” threshold of $1, below which stablecoin redemptions accelerate. We then focus on two specific stablecoin runs, in 2022 and 2023, showing that the same flight-to-safety dynamics also ...
Report
Navigating Geoeconomic Risk: Evidence from U.S. Mutual Funds
How do investors perceive and navigate the emerging geoeconomic risk? We identify firm-level geoeconomic risk using supply-chain links to Chinese firms targeted by U.S. export controls. Affected U.S. suppliers experience negative abnormal returns around policy announcements. These shocks propagate to mutual funds through portfolio holdings, raising volatility and lowering performance. Fund managers respond by reducing exposure to China-linked exporters, increasing portfolio concentration, and buying more lottery-like stocks. A long–short portfolio based on geoeconomic risk exposure earns ...
Working Paper
The Political Origin of Home Bias: The Case of Europe
We show that politics is at the root of the banks-sovereign nexus that exacerbated the Eurozone crisis. First, government-owned banks or banks with politicians in the board of directors display higher home bias in sovereign debt compared to privately-owned banks throughout the 2010-2013 period. Second, only government-owned banks increased the home bias during the sovereign crisis (moral suasion). We exploit the fact that equity injections (bail-outs) by domestic governments were not directly targeted to politically connected banks to show that, upon receiving such assistance, only ...
Working Paper
Endogenous Debt Maturity and Rollover Risk
We challenge the common view that short-term debt, by having to be rolled over continuously, is a risk factor that exposes banks to higher default risk. First, we show that the average effect of expiring obligations on default risk is insignificant; it is only when a bank has limited access to new funds that maturing debt has a detrimental impact on default risk. Next, we show that both limited access to new funds and shorter maturities are causally determined by deteriorating market expectations about the bank's future profitability. In other words, short-term debt is not a cause of ...
Discussion Paper
The Systemic Nature of Settlement Fails
In this note we analyze the systemic nature of settlement fails – the failure to deliver the agreed upon securities – during the 2007-09 period. Large and protracted settlement fails are believed to undermine the liquidity and well-functioning of securities markets, and as a result market groups and policymakers have tried to limit them.
Discussion Paper
The Impact of Natural Disasters on the Corporate Loan Market
Natural disasters are usually associated with an increase in the demand for credit by both households and companies in the affected regions. However, if capacity constraints preclude banks from meeting the local increase in demand, the banks may reduce lending elsewhere, thus propagating the shock to unaffected areas. In this post, we analyze the corporate loan market and find that banks, particularly those with lower capital, reduce credit provisioning to distant regions unaffected by natural disasters. We also find that shadow banks only partially offset the reduction in bank credit, so ...
Discussion Paper
Runs on Stablecoins
Stablecoins are digital assets whose value is pegged to that of fiat currencies, usually the U.S. dollar, with a typical exchange rate of one dollar per unit. Their market capitalization has grown exponentially over the last couple of years, from $5 billion in 2019 to around $180 billion in 2022. Notwithstanding their name, however, stablecoins can be very unstable: between May 1 and May 16, 2022, there was a run on stablecoins, with their circulation decreasing by 15.58 billion and their market capitalization dropping by $25.63 billion (see charts below.) In this post, we describe the ...
Discussion Paper
Primary Markets for Short-term Debt and the Stabilizing Effects of the PDCF
During early March 2020, amid rapidly spreading restrictions associated with preventing the spread of COVID-19, financial markets came under immense strain. These strains ultimately spilled over to funding markets and to institutions that are highly dependent on such markets.
Discussion Paper
Primary Dealers' Behavior during the 2007-08 Crisis : Part I, Repo Runs
This is the first of two notes that empirically document the behavior of U.S. Primary Dealers during the 2007-08 financial crisis. In this note we show that dealers' exposure to risky assets drives the observed repo funding squeeze; moreover, as evident from Lehman's experience, we show that repos become subject to counterparty risk during periods of stress, even when collateralized by the safest assets.