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19 posts on "Marco Cipriani"
January 31, 2022

Pricing Liquidity without Preemptive Runs

Image of drop of water in pool with dollars

Prime money market funds (MMFs) are vulnerable to runs. This was dramatically illustrated in September 2008 and March 2020, when massive outflows from prime MMFs worsened stress in the short-term funding markets and eased only after taxpayer-supported interventions by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. In this post, we describe how mechanisms like swing pricing that charge a price for liquidity can reduce the vulnerability of prime MMFs without triggering preemptive runs.

Posted at 7:00 am in Crisis, Financial Intermediation | Permalink
June 2, 2021

Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Runs

In March 2020, U.S. prime money market funds (MMFs) suffered heavy outflows following the liquidity shock triggered by the COVID-19 crisis. In a previous post, we characterized the run on the prime MMF industry as a whole and the role of the liquidity facility established by the Federal Reserve (the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility) in stemming the run. In this post, based on a recent Staff Report, we contrast the behaviors of retail and institutional investors during the run and explain the different reasons behind the run.

Posted at 7:00 am in Financial Intermediation | Permalink
November 24, 2020

How Bank Reserves Are Distributed Matters. How You Measure Their Distribution Matters Too.

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).

July 7, 2020

A New Reserves Regime? COVID‑19 and the Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

Aggregate reserves declined from nearly $3 trillion in August 2014 to $1.4 trillion in mid-September 2019, as the Federal Reserve normalized its balance sheet. This decline came to a halt in September 2019 when the Federal Reserve responded to turmoil in short-term money markets, with reserves fluctuating around $1.6 trillion in the early months of 2020. Then, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve dramatically expanded its balance sheet, both directly, through outright purchases and repurchase agreements, and indirectly, as a consequence of the facilities to support market functioning and the flow of credit to the real economy. In this post, we characterize the increase in reserves between March and June 2020, describing changes to the distribution and concentration of reserves.

June 29, 2020

Municipal Debt Markets and the COVID‑19 Pandemic

In March, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the market for municipal securities was severely stressed: mutual fund redemptions sparked unprecedented selling of municipal securities, yields increased sharply, and issuance dried up. In this post, we describe the evolution of municipal bond market conditions since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. We show that conditions in municipal markets have improved significantly, in part a result of the announcement and implementation of several Federal Reserve facilities. Yields have decreased substantially, mutual funds have received significant inflows, and issuance has rebounded. These improvements in municipal market conditions help ensure that state and local governments have better access to funding for critical capital investments.

Posted at 10:02 am in Federal Reserve, Fiscal Policy | Permalink
May 8, 2020

The Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility

To prevent outflows from prime and muni funds from turning into an industry-wide run after the COVID-19 outbreak, the Federal Reserve established Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility. This post looks at the Fed’s intervention, its goals, and the direct and indirect market effects.

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.

July 18, 2018

The Premium for Money‑Like Assets

Several academic papers have documented investors’ willingness to pay a premium to hold money-like assets and focused on its implication for financial stability. In a New York Fed staff report, we estimate such premium using a quasi-natural experiment, the recent reform of the money market fund (MMF) industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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.

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