Money and liquidity in financial markets

We argue that there is a connection between the interbank market for liquidity and the broader financial markets, which has its basis in demand for liquidity by banks. Tightness in the market for liquidity leads banks to engage in what we term “liquidity pull-back,” which involves selling financial assets either by banks directly or by levered investors. Empirical tests on the stock market are supportive. Tighter interbank markets are associated with relatively more volume in more liquid stocks; selling pressure, especially in more liquid stocks; and transitory negative returns. We control for market-wide uncertainty and in the process also contribute to the literature on portfolio rebalancing. Our general point is that money matters in financial markets.     

Assessing financial contagion in the interbank market: Maximum entropy versus observed interbank lending patterns

Interbank markets allow banks to cope with specific liquidity shocks. At the same time, they may represent a channel for contagion as a bank default may spread to other banks through interbank linkages. This paper analyses how contagion propagates within the Italian interbank market using a unique data set including actual bilateral exposures. Based on the availability of information on actual bilateral exposures for all Italian banks, the results obtained by assuming the maximum entropy are compared with those reflecting the observed structure of interbank claims. The comparison indicates that, under certain circumstances, depending on the structure of the interbank linkages, the recovery rates of interbank exposures and banks’ capitalisation, the maximum entropy approach overrates the scope for contagion.     

Funding liquidity risk: Definition and measurement

Funding liquidity risk has played a key role in all historical banking crises. Nevertheless, a measure for funding liquidity risk based on publicly available data remains so far elusive. We address this gap by showing that aggressive bidding at central bank auctions reveals funding liquidity risk. We can extract an insurance premium from banks’ bids which we propose as a measure of funding liquidity risk. Using a unique data set consisting of all bids in all auctions for the main refinancing operation conducted at the ECB between June 2005 and October 2008 we find that funding liquidity risk is typically stable and low, with occasional spikes especially around key events during the recent crisis. We also document downward spirals between funding liquidity risk and market liquidity. As measurement without clear definitions is impossible, we initially provide definitions of funding liquidity and funding liquidity risk.     

Multinational banking and the international transmission of financial shocks: Evidence from foreign bank subsidiaries

Using bank-level data on 368 foreign subsidiaries of 68 multinational banks in 47 emerging economies during 1994–2008, we present consistent evidence that internal capital markets in multinational banking contribute to the transmission of financial shocks from parent banks to foreign subsidiaries. We find that internal capital markets transmit favorable and adverse shocks by affecting subsidiaries’ reliance on their own internal funds for lending. We also find that the transmission of financial shocks varies across types of shocks; is strongest among subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe, followed by Asia and Latin America; is global rather than regional; and becomes more conspicuous in recent years. We also explore various conditions under which the international transmission of financial shocks via internal capital markets in multinational banking is stronger, including the subsidiaries’ reliance on funds from their parent bank, the subsidiaries’ entry mode, and the capital account openness and banking market structure in host countries.     

Do cross-country differences in bank efficiency support a policy of “national champions”?

As banking consolidation proceeds and Europe moves toward a single market, cross-country differences in banking efficiency can affect the future competitive position of a country’s financial market, helping to determine which European money centers may expand or contract. Looking at large banks across 10 countries, we find they are roughly equally efficient after controlling for differences in business environment, banking costs, and bank productivity. As no country seems to have a strong efficiency advantage, it seems likely that state efforts to promote “national champions” through favorable mergers which expand scale and market share may determine the outcome.     

The effect of the interbank network structure on contagion and common shocks

This paper proposes a dynamic multi-agent model of a banking system with central bank. Banks optimize a portfolio of risky investments and riskless excess reserves according to their risk, return, and liquidity preferences. They are linked via interbank loans and face stochastic deposit supply. Comparing different interbank network structures, it is shown that money-centre networks are more stable than random networks. Evidence is provided that the central bank stabilizes interbank markets in the short run only. Systemic risk via contagion is compared with common shocks and it is shown that both forms of systemic risk require different optimal policy responses.     

The liquidity effect for open market operations

The liquidity effect is the negative relationship between the supply of federal funds and the overnight federal funds rate. Deviations of the federal funds rate from its target can be interpreted as demand innovations for federal funds. Permanent adjustments to demand are modeled as an unobserved component and estimated using the Kalman filter to identify liquidity effects. The demand-based approach for identifying the liquidity effect contrasts previous work which concentrates on errors forecasting the supply of federal funds. This paper finds a liquidity effect several times larger than that from previous studies, indicating the market for federal funds is less liquid than previously thought. The effect of a $1 billion increase in open market operations over a 1-week period is a decrease of the federal funds rate by about 12 basis points.     

Anatomy of banking crises in developing and emerging market countries

This paper uses a Binary Classification Tree (BCT) model to analyze banking crises in 50 emerging market and developing countries during 1990-2005. The BCT model identifies three conditions (and the specific threshold of the key indictors) at which the vulnerability to banking crisis increases—(i) very high inflation, (ii) highly dollarized bank deposits combined with nominal depreciation or low bank liquidity, and (iii) low bank profitability—which highlight that foreign currency risk, poor financial soundness, and macroeconomic instability are important drivers of banking crises. The results also emphasize the importance of conditional thresholds in triggering crises, in that banking crises are underlined by a combination of vulnerabilities—or a sequence of (non-linear) conditions—rather than the deterioration of a unique factor.     

China’s official rates and bond yields

Recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions. To learn how this works in a bond market that differs significantly from those in the US and Europe, we model Chinese bond yields using the one-year deposit interest rate as a state variable. We also include the spread between the one-year market interest rate and the one-year deposit interest rate as another factor. The model is developed in an affine framework and closed-form solutions are obtained. We then test the model empirically with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation procedure. The results show that the new model that incorporates the official rate in China characterizes the changing shape of the yield curve well.     

Money Market Pressure and the Determinants of Banking Crises

This article develops an index of money market pressure to identify banking crises. We define banking crises as periods in which there is excessive demand for liquidity in the money market. We begin with the theoretical foundation of this new method. With the newly defined crisis episodes, we examine the determinants of banking crises using data complied from 47 countries. We find that slowdown of real GDP, lower real interest rates, extremely high inflation, large fiscal deficits, and over-valued exchange rates tend to precede banking crises. The effects of monetary base growth on the probability of banking crises are negligible.     

Banking crises and market discipline: International evidence

This paper analyzes the effect of banking crises on market discipline in an international sample of banks. We also evaluate how bank regulation, supervision, institutions, and crisis intervention policies shape the effect of banking crises on market discipline. We control for unobservable bank, country, and time specific effects using a panel data set of banks from 66 countries around 79 banking crises. The results suggest that on average market discipline weakens after a banking crisis. This weakening is higher in countries where bank regulation, supervision, and institutions promoted market discipline before the banking crisis, and where a more accommodative approach is adopted to resolve it.     

Repo Auctions and the Market for Liquidity

What is the nature of imperfections in the market for liquidity? Studying bidder level data from European Central Bank (ECB) repo auctions, we find that this market appears to be informationally efficient in the sense that participants do not have private information about future short‐term rates. However, auction allocations affect banks' subsequent behavior in a way that is consistent with a degree of allocational and operational inefficiency. Also, large bidders appear to have better access to the interbank market than small ones. Finally, the evidence suggests that the ECB uses collateral haircuts that do not equilibrate opportunity costs.     

Forecasting the macroeconomy with contemporaneous financial market information: Europe and the United States

Using Economic Tracking Portfolios (ETP), I find that it is possible to forecast future values of inflation and changes in industrial production in the United States and three core euro countries - Italy, France and Germany - utilizing only current and past financial market information. The longer the forecasting horizon, the better the forecasts based solely on financial market information compared to results from other methods. Of the countries I analyze, the overall forecasting performance of the tracking portfolios is the best for the U.S., and my method outperforms the forecasting performance of a VAR approach.     

Monetary policy signaling and movements in the term structure of interest rates

This paper examines how various monetary policy signals such as repo rate changes, inflation reports, speeches, and minutes from monetary policy meetings affect the term structure of interest rates. We find that unexpected movements in the short end of the yield curve are mainly driven by unexpected changes in the repo rate. However, published inflation reports and speeches also have some impact on short rates. Speeches are found to be a more important determinant for the longer end of the term structure. Our conclusion is that central bank communication is an essential part of the conduct of monetary policy.     

The Role of Interbank Markets in Monetary Policy: A Model with Rationing

This paper analyzes the impact of asymmetric information in the interbank market and establishes its crucial role in the microfoundations of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. We show that interbank market imperfections induce an equilibrium with rationing in the credit market. This has two major implications: first, it reconciles the irresponsiveness of business investment to the user cost of capital with the large impact of monetary policy ( magnitude effect ), and second, it shows that banks' liquidity positions condition their reaction to monetary policy ( Kashyap and Stein liquidity effect ).     

Rethinking monetary policy after the crisis

This lecture examines how the recent global financial crisis changes our thinking about how monetary policy should be conducted. It starts with a discussion of the science and practice of monetary policy before the crisis and then uses the lessons from the crisis to argue how the practice of monetary policy should be rethought along six dimensions: flexible inflation targeting, response to asset price bubbles, dichotomy between monetary policy and financial stability policy, risk management and gradualism, fiscal dominance, and forward guidance.     

Stock market reaction to fed funds rate surprises: State dependence and the financial crisis

This paper examines the response of US stock returns to Federal Funds rate (FFR) surprises between 1989 and 2012, focusing on the impact of the recent financial crisis. We find that outside the crisis period, stock prices increased as a response to unexpected FFR cuts. State dependence is identified with stocks exhibiting larger increases when interest rate easing coincided with recessions, bear markets, and tightening credit conditions. However, an important structural shift occurred during the crisis, changing the stocks’ response to FFR shocks and the nature of state dependence. Throughout the crisis period, stocks did not react positively to unexpected FFR cuts, which were interpreted as signals of worsening future economic conditions. This triggered a rebalancing of investment portfolios away from falling equities and towards safe-haven assets. Our results highlight the severity of the crisis and the ineffectiveness of conventional monetary policy close to the zero lower bound.     

Financial dollarization: The role of foreign-owned banks and interest rates

Why in many economies households and firms borrow and make deposits in foreign currency? Expanding on the existing literature, our framework addresses this question allowing for interest rate differentials and access to foreign funds to play a role in explaining this process of asset substitution or financial dollarization. Using a newly compiled data set on transition economies and employing a standard panel as well as a panel-VAR methodology we find that increasing access to foreign funds leads to higher credit dollarization, while it decreases deposit dollarization. Interest rate differentials matter for the dollarization of both loans and deposits.     

The Effect of Bank Credit on Asset Prices: Evidence from the Japanese Real Estate Boom during the 1980s

This paper studies whether bank credit fuels asset prices. Financial deregulation during the 1980s allowed keiretsus to obtain finance publicly and reduce their dependence on banks. Banks that lost these blue-chip customers increased their property lending, and serve as an instrument for the supply of real estate loans. Using this instrument, I find that a 0.01 increase in a prefecture's real estate loans as a share of total loans causes 14–20% higher land inflation compared with other prefectures over the 1981–91 period. The timing of losses of keiretsu customers also coincides with subsequent land inflation in a prefecture.     

Hedge funds,CDOs and the financial crisis: An empirical investigation of the “Magnetar trade”

The so called Magnetar trade (a kind of capital structure arbitrage on the US housing market, using CDS and synthetic CDOs, and exploiting rating-dependent mispricing of risk) has gained a high publicity due to a Pulitzer Prize awarded media story from two journalists of ProPublica (an online news outlet). The story essentially claimed that the mortgage investment strategy of the hedge fund Magnetar during the period between 2006 and mid 2007 was based on a desire to construct CDO deals with riskier assets so that they could place bets that portions of their own deals would fail. This paper provides several pieces of evidence in line with the argument that tranches from Magnetar-sponsored CDOs present overly risky investments. However, investors and rating agencies appear to have adjusted their required spread levels and ratings to reflect this higher riskiness, at least to some extent.