A Limited Central Bank

The President of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank from 2006–2015 discusses the Fed's essential role as preserver of the currency's purchasing power and how the institution might be improved to better fulfill that role. To that end, the author proposes the imposition of four limits on the central bank that, by restricting its discretion, can be expected to improve outcomes and accountability.

• First, limit the Fed's monetary policy goals to a narrow mandate in which price stability is the sole, or at least the primary, objective;
• Second, limit the types of assets that the Fed can hold on its balance sheet to Treasury securities;
• Third, limit the Fed's discretion in monetary policymaking by requiring a systematic, rule‐like approach; and
• Fourth, limit the boundaries of its lender‐of‐last‐resort credit extension.

These changes, by creating a more limited central bank, would help preserve the central bank's independence, thereby improving the effectiveness of monetary policy. They would also make it easier for the public to hold the Fed accountable for its policy decisions.     

The Lender of Last Resort Reconsidered

The Central Bank's lender of last resort role was developed by a series of authors in the very late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries. It was tested in practice in a number of countries and was found to be effective in providing monetary stability in the face of adverse shocks. There have recently been attempts to broaden the role—to make the central bank responsible for the stability of asset markets, or for protecting individual banks—and there have recently also been claims that an international lender of last resort is necessary. This article considers and rejects these proposed extensions to the classic lender of last resort role.     

Bank CEO careers after bailouts: The effects of management turnover on bank risk

We study whether bank bailouts affect CEO turnover and its subsequent impact on bank risk. Exploiting the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008, we find that TARP funds temporarily decreased the likelihood of bank CEO turnover during the crisis (2008–2010) but significantly increased CEO changes afterwards. Our results show that replacing TARP CEOs reduced individual bank's risk as well as the bank's contributions to the systemic risk. Finally, we find that TARP CEO turnover was mainly driven by a decrease in the bank's political capital. Overall we provide evidence that bank bailouts have important implications for banks’ risk-taking and systemic risk, insofar as bailouts affect bank CEO turnover.     

Political foundations of the lender of last resort: A global historical narrative

This paper offers a historical perspective on the evolution of central banks as lenders of last resort (LOLR). Countries differ in the statutory powers of the LOLR, which is the outcome of a political bargain. Collateralized LOLR lending as envisioned by Bagehot (1873) requires five key legal and institutional preconditions, all of which required political agreement. LOLR mechanisms evolved to include more than collateralized lending. LOLRs established prior to World War II, with few exceptions, followed policies that can be broadly characterized as implementing “Bagehot's Principles”: seeking to preserve systemic financial stability rather than preventing the failure of particular banks, and limiting the amount of risk absorbed by the LOLR as much as possible when providing financial assistance. After World War II, and especially after the 1970s, generous deposit insurance and ad hoc bank bailouts became the norm. The focus of bank safety net policy changed from targeting systemic stability to preventing depositor loss and the failure of banks. Statutory powers of central banks do not change much over time, or correlate with country characteristics, instead reflecting idiosyncratic political histories.     

"大而不倒"救助政策的理论和实证研究

由于大银行倒闭的巨大破坏性,最后贷款人在救助中通常奉行"大而不倒"政策。考虑到救助成本是银行资产规模的增函数,如果救助银行是最优的,那么救助任何一个更大的银行将也是最优的,这也意味着"大而不倒"救助政策在理论上的成立。在"大而不倒"政策下,规模和风险之间存在相互影响的关系。"大而不倒"救助政策影响银行的规模选择和资产风险的组合选择,导致银行追求变得更大且更具风险。     

Systemic banks and the lender of last resort

We propose a model where systemic and non-systemic banks are exposed to liquidity shortfalls so that a lender of last resort policy is required. We find that it is socially optimal to override the decision of the central bank by the unconditional provision of liquidity support when the shortfall is large enough, i.e. in crisis times. The existence of systemic banks provides a rationale for the central bank to act as lender of last resort for non-systemic banks in a larger range of their liquidity shortfalls. However, the impact of systemic risk on the optimal allocation of the lender of last resort responsibilities for systemic banks depends on the relative size of counteracting effects.     

推进利率市场化进程亟待完善金融安全网建设

“十二五”规划明确指出,我国将稳步推进利率市场化改革。关系金融稳定的金融安全网三道防线一审慎监管、最后贷款人制度、存款保险制度的建立与完善,成为深化利率市场化改革的重要保证。文章指出,应从完善宏观审慎管理框架、明确央行最后贷款人职责和加快建立存款保险制度这三个方面完善金融安全网建设,有规划、有步骤、坚定不移地推进利率市场化改革。     

Liquidity creation and funding ability during the interbank lending crunch

This study examines the portfolio response of US banks to the interbank lending collapse during the global financial crisis. The paper documents that a bank's response to the collapse of interbank markets is related to whether or not the bank was a net borrower or lender of funds. In particular, we find that typical borrowers had lower loan growth than typical lenders, but that the crisis did not differentially affect borrowers and lenders with respect to loan growth. However, borrowing and lending banks were differentially affected by the crisis in terms of their liquid asset growth. The typical borrowers reduced their liquid asset growth relative to lending banks during the crisis. We interpret this finding as saying that borrowing banks had to reduce their risky asset holdings because access to interbank funds had been reduced. The paper presents analogous analyses of the possible differential response of borrowers and lenders to changes in counterparty risk and lending through the Fed's TAF facility.     

中央银行再贷款政策及转型研究

再贷款是指中央银行对金融机构发放的贷款,是中央银行体制形成以来的重要的货币政策手段,也是中央银行作为最后贷款人的政策工具。基于对央行再贷款政策三次转型历程的分析,针对当前再贷款存在的问题,我国再贷款政策需要进行第四次转型。转型目标是再贷款作为“最后贷款人”的调控手段,并建立存款保险制度作为转型的制度保障。     

Do Lender of Last Resort Policies Matter? The Effects of Reconstruction Finance Corporation Assistance to Banks During the Great Depression

The paper uses a unique set of Depression-era bank financial data in a two-step system of equations with instrumental variables to estimate the effectiveness of lender of last resort (LOLR) strategies in a survival model with self-selection bias. Decreasing RFC loan collateral requirements over 1932–1933 facilitate the analysis of a relationship between LOLR collateral and survival. The results suggest that the RFC's practice of subordinating depositors' and investors' interests through senior claims on banks' best assets may have caused banks to fail. Although recapitalization after March 1933 helped banks survive the Great Depression, recapitalization is not a typical LOLR strategy.     

BANK REGULATIONS,CAPITAL STRUCTURE,AND RISK

The joint influence of the Federal Reserve's (Fed) discount window credit and reserve requirements and FDIC's deposit insurance on a bank's optimal capital structure and asset risk choices is analyzed. The specific seniority of such regulatory claims, and potentially strong negative correlation between bank asset classes, significantly alters our traditional view of such regulatory influences on bank behavior. I find that the discount window's presence does not always prompt bank risk taking and leverage, but it does partially offset such incentives under certain conditions. In addition to its cost, a reserve requirement provides the bank with an indirect subsidy that may encourage deposit funding. Thus, regulatory reforms, such as the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991, which curtail banks' access to the discount window, may not always be appropriate to resolve a bank's incentive for moral hazard behavior. The Fed's presence needs to be more comprehensively examined to design effective regulatory policy.     

Supply of bank loans and business debts: A view from historical bankruptcy cases

As bank loans fell in the 2008 crisis, business bankruptcy increased. To study how bank loans affect business balance sheets and bankruptcy, we use new data on bankrupt businesses in Missouri between 1898 and 1942. We confirm that when banks curtail loans, courts see more bankruptcies among businesses with high exposure to bank debt. To reduce real volatility, policy‐makers can set tough bank liquidity requirements in the upswing of business cycle but allow weaker requirements in the downswing. We also find that between 1914 and 1933, businesses in St. Louis were more sensitive to changes in bank loans than businesses in Kansas City, probably due to the tight monetary policy conducted by the conservative St. Louis Fed. The Glass‐Steagall Act weakened the relationship between bank loans and business debt structure. The takeaway is that lender‐of‐last‐resort practices stabilize both the financial sector and the real economy.     

Funding money-creating banks: Cash funding,balance sheet funding and the moral hazard of currency elasticity

Once banks are viewed as money creators rather than financial intermediaries, a distinction between their cash funding and balance sheet funding can be made. This distinction opens up various insights. It allows for a fuller explanation of the cash needs of banks with reference to the pattern of their cash gains and losses. It facilitates an understanding of the central bank as not only a cash lender of last resort (LOLR) for some banks some of the time, but also as a cash lender of continual and only resort (LOCOR) for all banks all of the time. It leads to novel insights into the sources of banks' balance sheet funding. The paper investigates the various implications of the central bank's elastic currency policy in its role as LOCOR, particularly how it thereby incites considerably more moral hazard than conventionally acknowledged. This realisation opens up a better understanding of the banking sector's proneness to excess and the economy's susceptibility to financial cycles. The paper concludes by weighing the merits of the only two policy strategies by which banking excess can be checked.     

美英央行对受困金融机构的救助方式评鉴

中央银行在危机救助中应该扮演怎样的角色,各国并无统一定论.本文通过深入研究美英央行在金融危机中对受困金融机构采取的救助手段及其履职效果,论证了央行在危机救助中发挥投资功能对平衡金融稳定职责和价格稳定职责具有重要意义,同时也是中央银行最终贷款人职能的必然延伸,可以有效填补央行与财政部门在金融稳定职责方面的模糊地带.     

The lender of last resort and the federal safety net

Under the aegis to the New Deal, the government established a safety net consisting of deposit insurance, a lender of last resort, and regulation. In the postwar period when the inflation rate was low, the economy stable, and the bank failure rate low, the safety net appeared to be an effective instrument to deliver financial stability. In the unstable economy since the 1970s, the functioning of each element of the safety net has been questioned. A reconsideration of the role assigned to each constituent is timely. I begin with a review that brings up to date since 1933, first, the role of regulation, second, deposit insurance, and third, the lender of last resort. Finally, I discuss how each of these might be reshaped in light of the changes since the 1970s.This paper was prepared for a conference in memory of Michael J. Hamburger at the Graduate School of Business Administration, New York University, March 12, 1987.     

Can European bank bailouts work?

Cross-border banking needs cross-border recapitalisation mechanisms. Each mechanism, however, suffers from the financial trilemma, which is that cross-border banking, national financial autonomy and financial stability are incompatible. In this paper, we study the efficiency of different burden-sharing agreements for the recapitalisation of the 30 largest banks in Europe. We consider bank bailouts for these banks in a simulation framework with stochastic country-specific bailout benefits. Among the burden sharing rules, we find that the majority and qualified-majority voting rules come close to the efficiency of a bailout mechanism with a supranational authority. Even a unanimous voting rule works better than home-country bailouts, which are very inefficient. If we assume additional systemic risk benefits, the efficiency of burden sharing rules comes close to the supranational solution.     

The Asymmetric Impact of Monetary Policy on Currency Markets

This study examines whether tightening and easing actions of the Federal Reserve symmetrically influence currency markets. Using daily data on four exchange rates from 1989 to 2001, we find that changes in the Fed's interest rate target are positively related to changes in the value of the dollar. Surprises associated with monetary tightening have a larger announcement effect as compared to monetary easing for the British pound, German mark, and Canadian dollar, whereas the opposite is true for the Japanese yen. The results appear to be driven by the reactions of foreign central banks to Fed actions, the Fed's credibility as a policymaker, and by the change in the Fed's disclosure policy beginning in 1994.     

EFFECT OF FED POLICY ACTIONS ON THE DEFAULT LIKELIHOOD OF COMMERCIAL BANKS

Using a measure of default likelihood based on an option pricing method, we provide evidence that Fed policy actions affect the financial distress of commercial banks. When the Fed increases (decreases) interest rates, the measure of default likelihood increases (decreases). We show that when the Fed uses a tight money policy, the increase in default likelihood is more pronounced for banks that have less capital, have greater financial leverage, are smaller, have fewer growth opportunities, and have lower asset quality. Additionally, the effects on bank default likelihood are more pronounced when the Fed's policy signals less concern about economic growth, as indicated by its bias toward further tightening, and when there is a market expectation of higher short‐term market rates in the future.     

Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode

Severe flight to quality episodes involve uncertainty about the environment, not only risk about asset payoffs. The uncertainty is triggered by unusual events and untested financial innovations that lead agents to question their worldview. We present a model of crises and central bank policy that incorporates Knightian uncertainty. The model explains crisis regularities such as market‐wide capital immobility, agents' disengagement from risk, and liquidity hoarding. We identify a social cost of these behaviors, and a benefit of a lender of last resort facility. The benefit is particularly high because public and private insurance are complements during uncertainty‐driven crises.