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Working Paper
Market-Based Monetary Policy Uncertainty
This paper investigates the role of monetary policy uncertainty for the transmission of FOMC actions to financial markets using a novel model-free measure of uncertainty based on derivative prices. We document a systematic pattern in monetary policy uncertainty over the course of the FOMC meeting cycle: On FOMC announcement days uncertainty tends to decline substantially, indicating the resolution of policy uncertainty. This decline is then reversed over the first two weeks of the intermeeting FOMC cycle. Both the level and the changes in uncertainty play an important role for the ...
Working Paper
The Fed Takes on Corporate Credit Risk: An Analysis of the Efficacy of the SMCCF
This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, a program designed to stabilize the U.S. corporate bond market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program announcements on March 23 and April 9, 2020, significantly reduced investment-grade credit spreads across the maturity spectrum—irrespective of the program’s maturity-eligibility criterion—and ultimately restored the normal upward-sloping term structure of credit spreads. The Federal Reserve’s actual purchases reduced credit spreads of eligible bonds 3 basis points more than those of ineligible ...
Working Paper
Visualization, Identification, and stimation in the Linear Panel Event-Study Design
Linear panel models, and the “event-study plots” that often accompany them, are popular tools for learning about policy effects. We discuss the construction of event-study plots and suggest ways to make them more informative. We examine the economic content of different possible identifying assumptions. We explore the performance of the corresponding estimators in simulations, highlighting that a given estimator can perform well or poorly depending on the economic environment. An accompanying Stata package, xtevent, facilitates adoption of our suggestions.
Working Paper
A Local Projections Approach to Difference-in-Differences Event Studies
Many of the challenges in the estimation of dynamic heterogeneous treatment effects can be resolved with local projection (LP) estimators of the sort used in applied macroeconometrics. This approach provides a convenient alternative to the more complicated solutions proposed in the recent literature on Difference in-Differences (DiD). The key is to combine LPs with a flexible ‘clean control’ condition to define appropriate sets of treated and control units. Our proposed LP-DiD estimator is clear, simple, easy and fast to compute, and it is transparent and flexible in its handling of ...
Working Paper
Pre-event Trends in the Panel Event-study Design
We consider a linear panel event-study design in which unobserved confounds may be related both to the outcome and to the policy variable of interest. We provide sufficient conditions to identify the causal effect of the policy by exploiting covariates related to the policy only through the confounds. Our model implies a set of moment equations that are linear in parameters. The effect of the policy can be estimated by 2SLS, and causal inference is valid even when endogeneity leads to pre-event trends (?pre-trends?) in the outcome. Alternative approaches perform poorly in our simulations
Working Paper
The Effects of the Federal Reserve Chair’s Testimony on Interest Rates and Stock Prices
We study how congressional testimony about monetary policy by the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System affects interest rates and stock prices. First, we study testimony associated with the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy Reports (MPRs) to Congress. Testimony for a particular MPR is usually given on two days, one day for each chamber of Congress. We separately study the first day and second day of MPR testimony. We also study testimonies not associated with MPRs but that are still related to monetary policy. We find that first-day MPR testimonies cause the largest ...
Discussion Paper
Are Stress Tests Still Informative?
Since the height of the financial crisis, each year the Federal Reserve has disclosed the results of its stress tests, and stress testing has become ?business as usual? in the U.S. banking industry. In this post, we assess whether market participants find supervisory stress test disclosures informative. After half a decade, do the disclosures still contain information that the market finds valuable?
Working Paper
An Analysis of the Literature on International Unconventional Monetary Policy
This paper critically evaluates the literature on international unconventional monetary policies. We begin by reviewing the theories of how such heterogeneous policies could work. Empirically, event studies provide compelling evidence that international asset purchase announcements have strongly influenced international bond yields, exchange rates, and equity prices in the desired manner and curtailed market perceptions of extreme events. Calibrated modeling and vector autoregressive (VAR) exercises imply that these policies significantly improved macroeconomic outcomes, raising output and ...
Report
Evaluating the information in the Federal Reserve stress tests
We present evidence that the Federal Reserve stress tests produce information about both the stress-tested bank holding companies and the overall state of the banking industry. Our evidence goes beyond a standard event study, which cannot differentiate between small abnormal returns and large, but opposite?signed, abnormal stock returns. We find that stress test disclosures are associated with significantly higher absolute abnormal returns, as well as higher abnormal trading volume. More levered and riskier holding companies seem to be more affected by the stress test information. We find no ...
Working Paper
An Analysis of the Literature on International Unconventional Monetary Policy
This paper evaluates the literature on international unconventional monetary policies (UMP). Introducing market segmentation, limits-to-arbitrage, and time-consistent policy in standard models permits a theoretical role for UMP. Empirical studies provide compelling evidence that UMP influenced international asset prices and tail-risk in the desired manner. Calibrated modeling and vector autoregressive (VAR) exercises imply that these policies also improved macroeconomic outcomes. We assess the recent debate on the empirical evidence and discuss central bank assessments of UMP. Despite ...