Analyzing the Effects of CFPB Oversight
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created in 2011, is a key element of post-crisis U.S. financial regulation, as well as the subject of intense debate. While some have praised the agency, citing the benefits of consumer financial protection, others argue that its activities involve high compliance costs, increase uncertainty and legal risk, and ultimately reduce the availability of financial services for consumers. We contribute to this debate by investigating empirically whether the CFPB’s supervisory and enforcement activities have significantly affected the supply of mortgage credit, or had other effects on bank risk-taking and profitability
Resolving “Too Big to Fail”
Many market participants believe that large financial institutions enjoy an implicit guarantee that the government will step in to rescue them from potential failure. These “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF) issues became particularly salient during the 2008 crisis. From the government’s perspective, rescuing these financial institutions can be important to avoid harm to the financial system. The bailouts also artificially lower the risk borne by investors and the financing costs of big banks. The Dodd-Frank Act attempts to remove the incentive for governments to bail out banks in the first place by mandating that each large bank file a “living will” that details its strategy for a rapid and orderly resolution in the event of material distress or failure without disrupting the broader economy. In our recent New York Fed staff report, we look at whether living wills are effective at reducing the cost of implicit TBTF bailout subsidies.
Regulatory Changes and the Cost of Capital for Banks
In response to the financial crisis nearly a decade ago, a number of regulations were passed to improve the safety and soundness of the financial system. In this post and our related staff report, we provide a new perspective on the effect of these regulations by estimating the cost of capital for banks over the past two decades. We find that, while banks’ cost of capital soared during the financial crisis, after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA), banks experienced a greater decrease in their cost of capital than nonbanks and nonbank financial intermediaries (NBFI).
The Effects of Post‑Crisis Banking Reforms
The financial crisis of 2007-08 exposed many limitations of the regulatory architecture of the U.S. financial system. In an attempt to mitigate these limitations, there has been a wave of regulatory reforms in the post-crisis period, especially in the banking sector. These include tighter bank capital and liquidity rules; new resolution procedures for failed banks; the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency; greater transparency in money market funds; and a move to central clearing of derivatives, among other measures. As these reforms have been finalized and implemented, a healthy debate has emerged in the policy and academic communities over the degree to which they have achieved their intended goals and the extent of any unintended consequences that might have arisen in the process.
At the New York Fed: Thirteenth Annual Joint Conference with NYU‑Stern on Financial Intermediation
Better understanding of financial intermediation is critical to the efforts of the New York Fed to promote financial stability and economic growth. In pursuit of this mission, the New York Fed recently hosted the thirteenth annual Federal Reserve Bank of New York–New York University Stern School of Business Conference on Financial Intermediation. At this conference, a range of authors were invited to discuss their research in this area. In this post, we present some of the discussion and findings from the conference.
At the New York Fed: Conference on the Effects of Post‑Crisis Banking Reforms
Crump and Santos preview a New York Fed conference debating the efficacy of post-crisis banking reforms, looking at whether they have achieved their intended goals and considering the unintended consequences.
Quantities and Prices during the Housing Bust
The recent U.S. housing crisis featured explosive growth and collapse of house prices at the national level, with substantial boom-bust pattern variation at the local level. What is less commonly known in the housing market is the behavior of housing quantities. While measures of supply and inventory play an important role in understanding markets, quantity data in housing is traditionally limited to national aggregates. Using a rich new data set of homes listed for sale across a wide range of U.S. housing markets, this post explores whether the collapse in prices from 2006 to 2009 owed more to a flood of houses on the market (higher supply) or a dearth of sales (lower demand).
Did the Dodd‑Frank Act End ‘Too Big to Fail’?
One goal of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 was to end “too big to fail.” Toward that goal, the Act required systemically important financial institutions to submit detailed plans for an orderly resolution (“living wills”) and authorized the FDIC to create an alternative resolution procedure. In response, the FDIC has developed a “single point of entry” (SPOE) strategy, under which healthy parent companies bear the losses of their failing subsidiaries. Since SPOE makes the parent company responsible for subsidiaries’ losses, we would expect parents to become riskier, relative to their subsidiaries, compared to before the announcement of the SPOE strategy in December 2013. Do bond raters and investors share this view?
Just Released: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricanes Irma and Maria
An examination of the fallout from Hurricanes Irma and Maria on the economies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands was the focus of an economic press briefing today at the New York Fed. Both U.S. territories were suffering from significant economic downturns and fiscal stress well before the storms hit in September 2017, raising concerns about their paths to recovery.
What Drives International Bank Credit?
A major question facing policymakers is how to deal with slumps in bank credit.