ECONOMY
-
Calming the Panic: Investor Risk Perceptions and the Fed’s Emergency Lending During the 2023 Bank Run
Natalia Fischl-Lanzoni, Martin Hiti, and Asani Sarkar In a companion post, we showed that during the bank run of spring 2023 investors were seemingly not concerned about bank risk broadly but rather became sensitized to the risk of only about a third of all publicly traded banks. In this post, we investigate how the Federal Reserve’s liquidity support affected investor…
Read More » -
A Country-Specific View of Tariffs
Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard U.S. trade policy remains in flux. Nevertheless, important elements of the new policy regime are apparent in data through July. What stands out are the large differences in realized tariff rates by trading partner, ranging from less than 5 percent for Canada and Mexico to 15 percent for Japan and to 40 percent for China.…
Read More » -
Consumption Sensitivity of Uncertain Households
Davide Melcangi and Gizem Kosar Uncertainty is a key component of everyday economic decisions of consumers and, perhaps not surprisingly, it plays a central role in economic models. According to economic theory, forward-looking consumers rely on their expectations and perceived uncertainty when making economic decisions. Nevertheless, measuring the uncertainty that households actually perceive, and how it affects consumer behavior, is…
Read More » -
A Danger to Self and Others: Consequences of Involuntary Hospitalization
Natalia Emanuel, Pim Welle, and Valentin Bolotnyy Every state in the country has a law permitting involuntary hospitalization if a person presents a danger to themselves or others as a result of mental illness. If a person reaches this high bar, the logic goes, they should be confined in a psychiatric hospital for treatment until they are stabilized. (The process…
Read More » -
The Shadow Value of Central Bank Lending
Tomas Jankauskas, Ugo Albertazzi, Lorenzo Burlon, and Nicola Pavanini After the Great Financial Crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) extended its monetary policy toolbox to include the use of long-term loans to banks at interest rates close to zero or even negative. These central bank interventions were aimed at supporting the transmission of expansionary monetary policy and likely played a…
Read More » -
The Rise of Sponsored Service for Clearing Repo
Adam Copeland and R. Jay Kahn Recently instituted rule amendments have initiated a large migration of dealer-to-client Treasury repurchase trades to central clearing. To date, the main avenue used to access central clearing is Sponsored Service, a clearing product that has, until now, received little attention. This post highlights the results from a recent Staff Report which presents a deep…
Read More » -
End-of-Month Activity Across the Treasury Market
Michael J. Fleming, Jonathan Palash-Mizner, and Or Shachar In a 2024 post, we showed that interdealer trading in benchmark U.S. Treasury notes and bonds concentrates on the last trading day of the month, likely due to passive investment funds’ turn-of-month portfolio rebalancing. In this post, we extend our trading activity analysis to the full range of Treasury securities and market…
Read More » -
Dutch Treat: The Netherlands’ Exorbitant Privilege in the Eighteenth Century
Stein Berre and Asani Sarkar The term “exorbitant privilege” emerged in the 1960s to describe the advantages derived by the U.S. economy from the dollar’s status as the de facto global reserve currency. In this post, we examine the exorbitant privilege that accrued to the Netherlands in the eighteenth century, when the Dutch guilder enjoyed global reserve currency status. We…
Read More » -
Do Employers Comply with Pay Transparency Requirements in Job Postings?
Richard Audoly and Roshie Xing Over the past few months, New Jersey and Vermont have joined a growing number of U.S. states in requiring employers to include an estimated salary range in their online job listings. Has this push for greater pay transparency been effective? In this post, we use granular data on U.S. job postings from Lightcast to assess…
Read More » -
A Historical Perspective on Stablecoins
Stephan Luck Digital currencies have grown rapidly in recent years. In July 2025, Congress passed the “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act” (GENIUS) Act, establishing the first comprehensive federal framework governing the issuance of stablecoins. In this post, we place stablecoins in a historical perspective by comparing them to national bank notes, a form of privately issued…
Read More »