Ryan Bush, Haitham Jendoubi, Matthew Raskin, and Giorgio Topa



In late August, as part of the Federal Reserve’s review of Monetary Policy Strategy, Tools, and Communications, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) published a revised Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. As observers have noted, the revised statement incorporated important changes to the Federal Reserve’s approach to monetary policy. This includes emphasizing maximum employment as a broad-based and inclusive goal and focusing on “shortfalls” rather than “deviations” of employment from its maximum level. The statement also noted that, in order to anchor longer-term inflation expectations at the FOMC’s longer-run goal, the Committee would seek to achieve inflation that averages 2 percent over time. In this post, we investigate the possible impact of these changes on financial market participants’ expectations for policy rate outcomes, based on responses to the Survey of Primary Dealers (SPD) and Survey of Market Participants (SMP) conducted by the New York Fed’s Open Market Trading Desk both shortly before and after the conclusion of the framework review. We find that the conclusion of the framework review coincided with a notable shift in market participants’ perceptions of the FOMC’s policy rate “reaction function,” in the direction of higher expected inflation and lower expected unemployment at the time of the next increase in the federal funds target range (or “liftoff”).

Jaison R. Abel, Jason Bram, Richard Deitz, and Jonathan Hastings



The New York-Northern New Jersey region experienced an unprecedented downturn earlier this year, one more severe than that of the nation, and the region is still struggling to make up the ground that was lost. That is the key takeaway at an economic press briefing held today by the New York Fed examining economic conditions during the pandemic in the Federal Reserve’s Second District. Despite the substantial recovery so far, business activity, consumer spending, and employment are all still well below pre-pandemic levels in much of the region, and fiscal pressures are mounting for state and local governments. Importantly, job losses among lower-wage workers and people of color have been particularly consequential. The pace of recovery was already slowing in the region before the most recent surge in coronavirus cases, and we are now seeing signs of renewed weakening as we enter the winter.

Kristian S. Blickle and João A. C. Santos




Leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, there were growing concerns about corporate sector indebtedness. High levels of borrowing may give rise to a “debt overhang” problem, particularly during downturns, whereby firms forego good investment opportunities because of an inability to raise additional funding. In this post, we show that firms with high levels of borrowing at the onset of the Great Recession underperformed in the following years, compared to similar—but less indebted—firms. These findings, together with early data on the revenue contractions following the COVID-19 outbreak, suggest that debt overhang during the COVID-recession could lead to an up to 10 percent decrease in growth for firms in industries most affected by the economic repercussions of the battle against the outbreak.

Michael Fleming, Or Shachar, and Peter Van Tassel

When the U.S. Treasury sells a new security, the security is announced to the public, auctioned a number of days later, and then issued sometime after that. When-issued (WI) trading refers to trading of the new security after the announcement but before issuance. Such trading promotes price discovery, which may reduce uncertainty at auction, potentially lowering government borrowing costs. Despite the importance of WI trading, and the advent of Treasury trading volume statistics from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), little is known publicly about the level of WI activity. In this post, we address this gap by analyzing WI transactions recorded in FINRA’s Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) database.

Gara Afonso, Marco Cipriani, Steph Clampitt, Haitham Jendoubi, Gabriele La Spada, and Will Riordan

Changes in the distribution of banks’ reserve balances are important since they may impact conditions in the federal funds market and alter trading dynamics in money markets more generally. In this post, we propose using the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient as a new approach to measuring reserve concentration. Since 2013, concentration, as captured by the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient, has co-moved with aggregate reserves, decreasing as aggregate reserves declined (such as in 2015-18) and increasing as aggregate reserves increased (such as at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic).

Rod Garratt and Michael Lee



In prior research, we documented evidence suggesting that digital payment adoptions have accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While digitalization of payment activity improves data utilization by firms, it can also infringe upon consumers’ right to privacy. Drawing from a recent paper, this blog post explains how payment data acquired by firms impacts market structure and consumer welfare. Then, we discuss the implications of introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that offers consumers a low-cost, privacy-preserving electronic means of payment—essentially, digital cash.

Ivan T. Ivanov, Marco Macchiavelli, and João A.C. Santos



Natural disasters are usually associated with an increase in the demand for credit by both households and companies in the affected regions. However, if capacity constraints preclude banks from meeting the local increase in demand, the banks may reduce lending elsewhere, thus propagating the shock to unaffected areas. In this post, we analyze the corporate loan market and find that banks, particularly those with lower capital, reduce credit provisioning to distant regions unaffected by natural disasters. We also find that shadow banks only partially offset the reduction in bank credit, so borrowers in regions unaffected by natural disasters experience a decline in credit supply.

Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw



Today, the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data reported that total household debt balances increased slightly in the third quarter of 2020, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. This increase marked a reversal from the modest decline in the second quarter of 2020, a downturn driven by a sharp contraction in credit card balances. In the third quarter, credit card balances declined again, even as consumer spending recovered somewhat; meanwhile, mortgage originations came in at a robust $1.049 trillion, the highest level since 2003. Many of the efforts to stabilize the economy in response to the COVID-19 crisis have focused on consumer balance sheets, both through direct cash transfers and through forbearances on federally backed debts. Here, we examine the uptake of forbearances on mortgage and auto loans and its impact on their delinquency status and the borrower’s credit score. This analysis, as well as the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, is based on anonymized Equifax credit report data.

Kristian Blickle, Matteo Crosignani, Fernando Duarte, Thomas Eisenbach, Fulvia Fringuellotti, and Anna Kovner

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in banks’ balance sheets. To understand how these changes have affected the stability of the U.S. banking system, we provide an update of four analytical models that aim to capture different aspects of banking system vulnerability.

Adam Copeland

The U.S. federal funds market played a central role in the financial system during the 2007-09 crisis, because it was the market which provided banks with immediate liquidity, even late in the day. Interpreting changes in fed funds rates is notoriously difficult, however, as many of the economic drivers behind the rates are simultaneously changing. In this post, I highlight results from a working paper which untangles the impact of these economic drivers and measures their respective effects on the marketplace using data over a sample period leading up to and during the financial crisis. The analysis shows that the spread between fed funds sold and bought widened because of increases in counterparty risk. Further, there was a large increase in the supply of cash into this market, suggesting that banks viewed fed funds as a relatively safe place to invest cash in a crisis environment.