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255 posts on "Financial Institutions"
December 18, 2019

Banking System Vulnerability: Annual Update

A key part of understanding the stability of the U.S. financial system is to monitor leverage and funding risks in the financial sector and the way in which these vulnerabilities interact to amplify negative shocks. In this post, we provide an update of four analytical models, introduced in a Liberty Street Economics post last year, that aim to capture different aspects of banking system vulnerability.

December 16, 2019

Selection in Banking

Over the past thirty years, more than 2,900 U.S. banks have transformed from pure depository institutions into conglomerates involved in a broad range of business activities. What type of banks choose to become conglomerate organizations? In this post, we document that, from 1986 to 2018, such institutions had, on average, a higher return on equity in the three years prior to their decision to expand, as well as a lower level of risk overall. However, this superior pre-expansion performance diminishes over time, and all but disappears by the end of the 1990s.

November 20, 2019

Monetary Policy Transmission and the Size of the Money Market Fund Industry

Assets under management (AUM) of retail money market funds (MMF) have soared during monetary policy tightening episodes, lagging the spread between MMF yields and CD rates.

November 13, 2019

The Side Effects of Shadow Banking on Liquidity Provision

Over the past two decades, the growth of shadow banking has transformed the way the U.S. banking system funds corporations. In this post, we describe how this growth has affected both the term loan and credit line businesses, and how the changes have resulted in a reduction in the liquidity insurance provided to firms.

November 4, 2019

Since the Financial Crisis, Aggregate Payments Have Co‑moved with Aggregate Reserves. Why?

Thomas Eisenbach, Kyra Frye, and Helene Hall take a look at what is driving the strong co-movement between aggregate payments sent over Fedwire and total aggregate reserves following the financial crisis.

September 23, 2019

Once Upon a Time in the Banking Sector: Historical Insights into Banking Competition

How does competition among banks affect credit growth and real economic growth? In addition, how does it affect financial stability? In this blog post, we derive insights into this important set of questions from novel data on the U.S. banking system during the nineteenth century.

September 4, 2019

The Transmission of Monetary Policy and the Sophistication of Money Market Fund Investors

In December 2015, the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy for the first time in almost ten years and, over the following three years, it raised interest rates eight more times, increasing the target range for the federal funds rate from 0-25 basis points (bps) to 225-250 bps. To what extent are changes in the fed funds rate transmitted to cash investors, and are there differences in the pass-through between retail and institutional investors? In this post, we describe the impact of recent rate increases on the yield paid by money market funds (MMFs) to their investors and show that the impact varies depending on investors’ sophistication.

July 19, 2019

At the New York Fed: Research Conference on FinTech

Financial technology (“FinTech”) refers to the evolving intersection of financial services and technology. In March, the New York Fed hosted “The First New York Fed Research Conference on FinTech” to understand the implications of FinTech developments on issues that are relevant to the Fed’s mandates such as lending, payments, and regulation. In this post, we summarize the principal themes and findings of the conference.

June 26, 2019

How Large Are Default Spillovers in the U.S. Financial System?

When a financial firm suffers sufficiently high losses, it might default on its counterparties, who may in turn become unable to pay their own creditors, and so on. This “domino” or “cascade” effect can quickly propagate through the financial system, creating undesirable spillovers and unnecessary defaults. In this post, we use the framework that we discussed in “Assessing Contagion Risk in a Financial Network,” the first part of this two-part series, to answer the question: How vulnerable is the U.S. financial system to default spillovers?

June 24, 2019

Assessing Contagion Risk in a Financial Network

Duarte, Jones, and Ruela describe how stress can propagate through the financial system and sketch out an approach for quantifying economic losses stemming from default cascades.

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