Search Results
Working Paper
Mapping Heat in the U.S. Financial System
We provide a framework for assessing the build-up of vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system. We collect forty-four indicators of financial and balance-sheet conditions, cutting across measures of valuation pressures, nonfinancial borrowing, and financial-sector health. We place the data in economic categories, track their evolution, and develop an algorithmic approach to monitoring vulnerabilities that can complement the more judgmental approach of most official-sector organizations. Our approach picks up rising imbalances in the U.S. financial system through the mid-2000s, presaging ...
Journal Article
Macroprudential policy: a case study from a tabletop exercise
Since the global financial crisis of 2007-09, policymakers and academics have advocated the use of prudential policy tools to reduce the risks that could inhibit the financial sector?s ability to intermediate credit. The use of such tools in the service of financial stability is often called macroprudential policy. This article describes a ?tabletop? exercise in which Federal Reserve Bank presidents were presented with a hypothetical scenario of overheating markets and asked to consider the effectiveness of macroprudential policy approaches in averting or moderating the financial disruptions ...
Working Paper
Explaining the Boom-Bust Cycle in the U.S. Housing Market: A Reverse-Engineering Approach
We use a simple quantitative asset pricing model to ?reverse-engineer? the sequences of stochastic shocks to housing demand and lending standards that are needed to exactly replicate the boom-bust patterns in U.S. household real estate value and mortgage debt over the period 1995 to 2012. Conditional on the observed paths for U.S. disposable income growth and the mortgage interest rate, we consider four different specifications of the model that vary according to the way that household expectations are formed (rational versus moving average forecast rules) and the maturity of the mortgage ...
Working Paper
Oil Price Fluctuations, US Banks, and Macroprudential Policy
Using US micro-level data on banks, we document a negative effect of high oil prices on US banks' balance sheets, more negative for highly leveraged banks. We set and estimate a general equilibrium model with banking and oil sectors that rationalizes those findings through the financial accelerator mechanism. This mechanism amplifies the effect of oil price shocks, making them non-negligible drivers of the dynamics of US banks' intermediation activity and of the US real economy. Macroprudential policy, in the form of a countercyclical capital buffer, can meaningfully address oil price ...
Working Paper
How Effective are Macroprudential Policies? An Empirical Investigation
In recent years, policymakers have generally relied on macroprudential policies to address financial stability concerns. However, our understanding of these policies and their efficacy is limited. In this paper, we construct a novel index of domestic macroprudential policies in 57 advanced and emerging economies covering the period from 2000:Q1 to 2013:Q4, with tightenings and easings recorded separately. The effectiveness of these policies in curbing bank credit growth and house price inflation is then assessed using a dynamic panel data model. The main findings of the paper are: (1) ...
Working Paper
Capital Buffers in a Quantitative Model of Banking Industry Dynamics
We develop a model of banking industry dynamics to study the quantitative impact of regulatory policies on bank risk taking and market structure as well as the feedback effect of market structure on the efficacy of policy. Since our model is matched to U.S. data, we propose a market structure where big banks with market power interact with small, competitive fringe banks. Banks face idiosyncratic funding shocks in addition to aggregate shocks which affect the fraction of performing loans in their portfolio. A nontrivial bank size distribution arises out of endogenous entry and exit, as well ...
Report
Monetary policy, financial conditions, and financial stability
We review a growing literature that incorporates endogenous risk premiums and risk taking in the conduct of monetary policy. Accommodative policy can create an intertemporal trade-off between improving current financial conditions and increasing future financial vulnerabilities. In the United States, structural and cyclical macroprudential tools to reduce vulnerabilities at banks are being implemented, but they may not be sufficient because activities can migrate and there are limited tools for nonbank intermediaries and for borrowers. While monetary policy itself can influence ...
Report
Macroprudential policy: case study from a tabletop exercise
Since the global financial crisis of 2007-09, policymakers and academics around the world have advocated the use of prudential tools for macroprudential purposes. This paper presents a macroprudential tabletop exercise that aimed at confronting Federal Reserve Bank presidents with a plausible, albeit hypothetical, macro-financial scenario that would lend itself to macroprudential considerations. In the tabletop exercise, the primary macroprudential objective was to reduce the likelihood and severity of possible future financial disruptions associated with the hypothetical overheating ...
Report
Disasters Everywhere: The Costs of Business Cycles Reconsidered
Business cycles are costlier and stabilization policies more beneficial than widely thought. This paper shows that all business cycles are asymmetric and resemble mini “disasters.” By this we mean that growth is pervasively fat-tailed and non-Gaussian. Using long-run historical data, we show empirically that this is true for all advanced economies since 1870. Focusing on the peacetime sample, we develop a tractable local projection framework to estimate consumption growth paths for normal and financial-crisis recessions. Using random coefficient local projections we get an easy and ...
Discussion Paper
Intermediary Leverage Cycles and Financial Stability
The financial crisis of 2007-09 highlighted the central role that financial intermediaries play in the propagation and amplification of shocks. Intermediaries increase leverage during the boom, which then makes them more vulnerable to adverse economic developments. In this post, we review evidence on the balance-sheet behavior of financial intermediaries and describe a channel that allows intermediaries to increase leverage during booms when asset market volatility tends to be low, which in turn forces them to dramatically reduce leverage once volatility increases. As shown during the ...