304 posts on "Financial Markets"
October 21, 2016
From the Vault: Funds, Flight, and Financial Stability
The money market industry is in the midst of significant change. With the implementation this month of new Securities and Exchange Commission rules designed to make money market funds (MMFs) more resilient to stress, institutional prime and tax-exempt funds must report more accurate prices reflecting the net asset value (NAV) of shares based on market prices for the funds’ asset holdings, rather than promising a fixed NAV of $1 per share. The rules also permit prime funds, which invest in a mixture of corporate debt, certificates of deposit, and repurchase agreements, to impose fees or set limits on investors who redeem shares when market conditions sharply deteriorate. (Funds investing in government securities, which are more stable, are not subject to the new rules.) These changes, driven by a run on MMFs at the height of the financial crisis, add to earlier risk-limiting rules on portfolio holdings.
Posted at 7:00 am in Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Regulation | Permalink | Comments (1)
October 12, 2016
Let the Light In: How Financial Reporting and Transparency Improve Corporate Governance
Financial reporting is valuable because corporate governance—which we view as the set of contracts that help align managers’ interests with those of shareholders—can be more efficient when the parties commit themselves to a more transparent information environment. This is a key theme in our article The Role of Financial Reporting and Transparency in Corporate Governance, which reviews recent literature on the part played by financial reporting in resolving agency conflicts among managers, directors, and shareholders. In this post, we highlight some of the governance issues and recommendations discussed in the article, and we focus on how information asymmetries can create agency conflicts.
October 5, 2016
Why Did the Recent Oil Price Declines Affect Bond Prices of Non‑Energy Companies?
Oil prices plunged 65 percent between July 2014 and December of the following year. During this period, the yield spread—the yield of a corporate bond minus the yield of a Treasury bond of the same maturity—of energy companies shot up, indicating increased credit risk. Surprisingly, the yield spread of non‑energy firms also rose even though many non‑energy firms might be expected to benefit from lower energy‑related costs. In this blog post, we examine this counterintuitive result. We find evidence of a liquidity spillover, whereby the bonds of more liquid non‑energy firms had to be sold to satisfy investors who withdrew from bond funds in response to falling energy prices.
Posted at 7:00 am in Corporate Finance, Credit, Financial Markets, Inflation, Liquidity, Treasury, Unemployment | Permalink
August 17, 2016
A Closer Look at the Federal Reserve’s Securities Lending Program
The Federal Reserve lends specific Treasury and agency debt securities held in its System Open Market Account (SOMA)—and accepts general Treasury securities as collateral—through its daily securities lending program
July 18, 2016
Forecasting Interest Rates over the Long Run
In a previous post, we showed how market rates on U.S. Treasuries violate the expectations hypothesis because of time-varying risk premia.
Posted at 7:00 am in Expectations, Financial Markets, Fiscal Policy, Forecasting, Household Finance, Inflation, Treasury | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 29, 2016
Monetary Policy Transmission before and after the Crisis
The Federal Open Market Committee implements monetary policy by raising or lowering its target for the federal funds rate, the interest rate banks charge each other for overnight loans.
June 1, 2016
Revisiting the Case for International Policy Coordination
Prompted by the U.S. financial crisis and subsequent global recession, policymakers in advanced economies slashed interest rates dramatically, hitting the zero lower bound (ZLB), and then implemented unconventional policies such as large-scale asset purchases. In emerging economies, however, the policy response was more subdued since they were less affected by the financial crisis. As a result, capital flows from advanced to emerging economies increased markedly in response to widening interest rate differentials. Some emerging economies reacted by adopting measures to slow down capital inflows, acting under the presumption that these flows were harmful. This type of policy response has reignited the debate over how to moderate international spillovers.
Posted at 7:00 am in Exchange Rates, Exports, Financial Markets, International Economics, Monetary Policy | Permalink
May 5, 2016
Borrowing, Lending, and Swapping Collateral in GCF Repo®
By Marco Cipriani and Adam Copeland In the third post in this series, we examined GCF Repo® traders’ end-of-day strategies. In this final post, we further our understanding of dealers’ behavior by looking at their trading pattern within the day.
May 4, 2016
Why Dealers Trade in GCF Repo®
Analysis using confidential market data shows that the majority of individual dealers follow consistent strategies in GCF Repo, where dealers are net borrowers or lenders on almost every day that they are active.
May 3, 2016
Understanding the Interbank GCF Repo® Market
In this post, we provide a different perspective on the General Collateral Finance (GCF) Repo® market.
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