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Discussion Paper
Why Are Credit Card Rates So High?
Drechsler, Itamar; Jung, Hyeyoon; Peng, Weiyu; Supera, Dominik; Zhou, Guanyu (2025-03-31)
Credit cards play a crucial role in U.S. consumer finance, with 74 percent of adults having at least one. They serve as the main method of payment for most individuals, accounting for 70 percent of retail spending. They are also the primary source of unsecured borrowing, with 60 percent of accounts carrying a balance from one month to the next. Surprisingly, credit card interest rates are very high, averaging 23 percent annually in 2023. Indeed, their rates are far higher than the rates on any other major type of loan or bond. Why are credit card rates so high? In our recent research paper, ...
Liberty Street Economics , Paper 20250331

Report
The capital structure and governance of a mortgage securitization utility
Wright, Joshua; Tracy, Joseph; Mosser, Patricia C. (2013-10-01)
We explore the capital structure and governance of a mortgage-insuring securitization utility operating with government reinsurance for systemic or ?tail? risk. The structure we propose for the replacement of the GSEs focuses on aligning incentives for appropriate pricing and transfer of mortgage risks across the private sector and between the private sector and the government. We present the justification and mechanics of a vintage-based capital structure, and assess the components of the mortgage guarantee fee, whose size we find is most sensitive to the required capital ratio and the ...
Staff Reports , Paper 644

Working Paper
Is optimal monetary policy always optimal?
Gürkaynak, Refet S.; Davig, Troy A. (2015-07-30)
No. And not only for the reason you think. In a world with multiple inefficiencies the single policy tool the central bank has control over will not undo all inefficiencies; this is well understood. We argue that the world is better characterized by multiple ine?ciencies and multiple policy makers with various objectives. Asking the policy question only in terms of optimal monetary policy effectively turns the central bank into the residual claimant of all policy and gives the other policymakers a free hand in pursuing their own goals. This further worsens the tradeoffs faced by the central ...
Research Working Paper , Paper RWP 15-5

Report
Liquidity policies and systemic risk
Adrian, Tobias; Boyarchenko, Nina (2014-12-01)
The growth of wholesale-funded credit intermediation has motivated liquidity regulations. We analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which liquidity and capital regulations interact with the supply of risk-free assets. In the model, the endogenously time-varying tightness of liquidity and capital constraints generates intermediaries? leverage cycle, influencing the pricing of risk and the level of risk in the economy. Our analysis focuses on liquidity policies? implications for household welfare. Within the context of our model, liquidity requirements are preferable to ...
Staff Reports , Paper 661

Working Paper
What we learn from China's rising shadow banking: exploring the nexus of monetary tightening and banks' role in entrusted lending
Chen, Kaiji; Ren, Jue; Zha, Tao (2016-01-01)
We argue that China's rising shadow banking was inextricably linked to potential balance-sheet risks in the banking system. We substantiate this argument with three didactic findings: (1) commercial banks in general were prone to engage in channeling risky entrusted loans; (2) shadow banking through entrusted lending masked small banks' exposure to balance-sheet risks; and (3) two well-intended regulations and institutional asymmetry between large and small banks combined to give small banks an incentive to exploit regulatory arbitrage by bringing off-balance-sheet risks into the balance ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2016-1

Working Paper
Monetary Stimulus amid the Infrastructure Investment Spree: Evidence from China's Loan-Level Data
Gao, Haoyu; Zha, Tao; Waggoner, Daniel F.; Chen, Kaiji; Higgins, Patrick C. (2020-08-27)
We study the impacts of the 2009 monetary stimulus and its interaction with infrastructure spending on credit allocation. We develop a two-stage estimation approach and apply it to China's loan-level data that covers all sectors in the economy. We find that except for the manufacturing sector, monetary stimulus itself did not favor state-owned enterprises (SOEs) over non-SOEs in credit access. Infrastructure investment driven by nonmonetary factors, however, enhanced the monetary transmission to bank credit allocated to local government financing vehicles in infrastructure and at the same ...
FRB Atlanta Working Paper , Paper 2020-16

Working Paper
The Social Cost of Near-Rational Investment
Hassan, Tarek A.; Mertens, Thomas M. (2016-08-12)
We show that the stock market may fail to aggregate information even if it appears to be efficient, and that the resulting decrease in the information content of prices may drastically reduce welfare. We solve a macroeconomic model in which information about fundamentals is dispersed and households make small, correlated errors when forming expectations about future productivity. As information aggregates in the market, these errors amplify and crowd out the information content of stock prices. When prices reflect less information, the conditional variance of stock returns rises, causing an ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2016-16

Report
A private lender cooperative model for residential mortgage finance
Wright, Joshua; Tracy, Joseph; Mosser, Patricia C.; Vickery, James; Dechario, Toni (2010-08-01)
We describe a set of six design principles for the reorganization of the U.S. housing finance system and apply them to one model for replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has so far received frequent mention but little sustained analysis ? the lender cooperative utility. We discuss the pros and cons of such a model and propose a method for organizing participation in a mutual loss pool and an explicit, priced government insurance mechanism. We also discuss how these principles and this model are consistent with preserving the ?to-be-announced,? or TBA, market ? particularly if the ...
Staff Reports , Paper 466

Report
Financialization in Commodity Markets
Christiano, Lawrence J.; Chari, V. V. (2017-08-24)
The ?nancialization view is that increased trading in commodity futures markets is associated with increases in the growth rate and volatility of commodity spot prices. This view gained credence be-cause in the 2000s trading volume increased sharply and many commodity prices rose and became more volatile. Using a large panel dataset we constructed, which includes commodities with and with-out futures markets, we ?nd no empirical link between increased futures market trading and changes in price behavior. Our data sheds light on the economic role of futures markets. The conventional view is ...
Staff Report , Paper 552

Working Paper
Fiscal Dominance and US Monetary: 1940–1975
Humpage, Owen F. (2016-12-21)
This narrative investigates the frictions that existed between the Federal Reserve?s monetary policies and the US Treasury?s debt-management operations from the onset of the Second World War through the end of the Federal Reserve?s even-keel actions in mid-1975. The analysis suggests that three factors can help explain why the Federal Reserve compromised the attainment of its statutorily mandated monetary-policy objectives for debt-management reasons: 1) the existence of an existential threat, 2) the fear that to do otherwise would create instability in the banking sector, and 3) the ...
Working Papers (Old Series) , Paper 1632

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