Liberty Street Economics

July 11, 2016

How Have High Reserves and New Policy Tools Reshaped the Fed Funds Market?

Gara Afonso and Sammuel Stern Over the last decade, the federal funds market has evolved to accommodate new policy tools such as interest on reserves and the overnight reverse repo facility. Trading motives have also responded to the expansion in aggregate reserves as the result of large-scale asset purchases. These changes have affected market participants […]

Posted at 7:00 am in Credit, Fed Funds | Permalink
July 8, 2016

Hey, Economist! Why—and When—Did the Treasury Embrace Regular and Predictable Issuance?

Few people know the Treasury market from as many angles as Ken Garbade, a senior vice president in the Money and Payments Studies area of the New York Fed’s Research Group. Ken taught financial markets at NYU’s graduate school of business for many years before heading to Wall Street to assume a position in the research department of the primary dealer division of Bankers Trust Company. At Bankers, Ken conducted relative-value research on the Treasury market, assessing how return varies relative to risk for particular Treasury securities. For a time, he also traded single-payment Treasury obligations known as STRIPS—although not especially successfully, he notes.

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 27, 2016

Hey, Economist! How Is the Research and Statistics Group Changing?

As Director of Research for the New York Fed for the past seven years, Jamie McAndrews has been responsible for the Bank’s financial and economic policy research, as well as the collection of data and statistics from financial institutions. On the eve of his retirement on June 30, Jamie shared his perspective on how the Research and Statistics Group has changed with Andrew Haughwout, a senior vice president in the Group.

Posted at 7:00 am in Hey, Economist! | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 24, 2016

Just Released: May’s Indexes of Coincident Economic Indicators Show Economic Growth Moderating across the Region

The May Indexes of Coincident Economic Indicators (CEIs) for New Jersey, New York State, and New York City, released today, show some slowing in economic growth across the region—in part reflecting the Verizon strike (which has since been settled), as well as somewhat weaker economic fundamentals.

June 22, 2016

The Rapidly Changing Nature of Japan’s Public Debt

Japan’s general government debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest of advanced economies, due in part to increased spending on social services for an aging population and a level of GDP that has not increased for two decades.

June 20, 2016

Risky Business: Government Mortgage Insurance Programs

W. Scott Frame, Kristopher Gerardi, and Joseph Tracy Editors’ note: The column headings in the final table in this post have been corrected from an earlier version. Homeownership has long been a U.S. public policy goal. One of the many ways that the federal government subsidizes homeownership is through mortgage insurance programs operated by the […]

June 6, 2016

Is Health Insurance Good for Your Financial Health?

What is the purpose of health care? What is the purpose of health insurance? When people fall ill, they seek health care in order to get better. But insurance has a slightly different function: Its main role is not to protect our health per se, but to protect our finances. For most people, lifetime health expenditures are quite low. However, some people have enormous health costs owing to major illnesses or health conditions. And this is where health insurance comes in—its goal (like that of any other form of insurance) is to protect these individuals against large, and sometimes ruinous, health expenditures. Has the recent health reform served this purpose?

Posted at 10:00 am in Household Finance, Inflation | Permalink

Just Released: Mapping the Differences in School Spending in New York City

Rajashri Chakrabarti and Michael Stewart This morning, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a set of interactive visuals that present data on school spending and its various components—such as instructional spending, instructional support, leadership support, and building services spending—across all thirty-two community school districts (CSD) in New York City and map their progression […]

Posted at 7:00 am in Education, New York, Regional Analysis | Permalink
June 3, 2016

At the N.Y. Fed: The Transatlantic Economy: Convergence or Divergence?

On April 18, 2016, the New York Fed hosted a conference on current and future policy directions for the linked economies of Europe and the United States. “The Transatlantic Economy: Convergence or Divergence,” organized jointly with the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the European Commission, brought together U.S. and Europe-based policymakers, regulators, and academics to discuss a series of important issues: Are the economies of the euro area and the United States on a convergent or divergent path? Are financial regulatory reforms making the banking and financial structures more similar? Will this imply a convergence in macroprudential policies? Which instruments do the United States and the euro area have at their disposal to raise investment, spur productivity, and avoid secular stagnation? In this post, we summarize the principal themes and findings of the conference discussion.

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