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Report
How "unconventional" are large-scale asset purchases? The impact of monetary policy on asset prices
This paper examines the impact of large-scale asset purchases (LSAP) on U.S. asset prices (nominal and inflation-indexed bonds, stocks, and U.S. dollar spot exchange rates) using an event study with intraday data. The surprise component of LSAP announcements is identified from Financial Times articles. Estimation results show that the LSAP news has economically large and highly significant effects on asset prices, even after controlling for the surprise component of the Fed's conventional target rate decision and communication about its future path of policy. This study documents that the ...
Report
The Bitcoin–Macro Disconnect
This paper investigates the link between Bitcoin and macroeconomic fundamentals by estimating the impact of macroeconomic news on Bitcoin using an event study with intraday data. The key result is that, unlike other U.S. asset classes, Bitcoin is orthogonal to monetary and macroeconomic news. This disconnect is puzzling as unexpected changes in discount rates should, in principle, affect the price of Bitcoin even when interpreting Bitcoin as a purely speculative asset.
Journal Article
The financial market effect of FOMC minutes
The influence of the Federal Reserve?s unanticipated target rate decisions on U.S. asset prices has been the subject of numerous studies. More recently, researchers have looked at the asset price response to statements issued by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Yet, despite a vast and growing body of evidence on the financial market effect of monetary news released on FOMC meeting days, little is known about the real-time response of U.S. asset prices to the information contained in central bank minutes. This article fills the gap by using a novel, high-frequency data set to examine ...
Working Paper
Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Normalization
The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on its earnings remittances to the U.S. Treasury and, more broadly, on the government's overall fiscal position. We find that reducing longer-run reserve balances from $2.3 trillion (roughly the current amount) to $1 trillion reduces the likelihood of posting a quarterly net loss in the future from 30 ...
Report
Fiscal implications of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet normalization
The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on its earnings remittances to the U.S. Treasury and, more broadly, on the government's overall fiscal position. We find that reducing longer-run reserve balances from $2.3 trillion (roughly the current amount) to $1 trillion reduces the likelihood of posting a quarterly net loss in the future from 30 ...
Discussion Paper
Is There a Bitcoin–Macro Disconnect?
Cryptocurrencies’ market capitalization has grown rapidly in recent years. This blog post analyzes the role of macro factors as possible drivers of cryptocurrency prices. We take a high-frequency perspective, and we focus on Bitcoin since its market capitalization dwarfs that of all other cryptocurrencies combined. The key finding is that, unlike other asset classes, Bitcoin has not responded significantly to U.S. macro and monetary policy news. This disconnect is puzzling, as unexpected changes in discount rates should, in principle, affect the price of Bitcoin.
Working Paper
Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Normalization
The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserve's longer-run balance sheet on its earnings remittances to the U.S. Treasury and, more broadly, on the government's overall fiscal position. We find that reducing longer-run reserve balances from $2.3 trillion (roughly the current amount) to $1 trillion reduces the likelihood of posting a quarterly net loss in the future from 30 ...
Discussion Paper
How Unconventional Are Large-Scale Asset Purchases?
The large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs) undertaken by the Fed starting in late November 2008 are widely considered to be a form of ?unconventional? monetary policy. Although these interventions are certainly unprecedented, this post shows that their effect on financial conditions is not that unconventional, in the sense that the relative effects of the LSAPs on returns across broad asset classes?nominal and real government bonds, stocks, and foreign exchange?are quite similar to those of more conventional policies, such as a reduction in the federal funds rate (FFR).
Discussion Paper
Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet Normalization
This Note summarizes analysis conducted in our recent FEDS working paper that seeks to understand the fiscal implications of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet normalization program.
Discussion Paper
Survey Measures of Expectations for the Policy Rate
Market prices provide timely information on policy expectations. But as we emphasized in our previous post, they can deviate from investors? expectations of the most likely path because they embed risk premiums and represent probability-weighted averages over different possible paths. In contrast, surveys explicitly ask respondents for their views on the likely path of economic variables. In this post, we highlight two surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that provide information about expectations that can complement market-based measures.