Optimal allotment policy in central bank open market operations1

This article derives a central bank's optimal liquidity supply towards a money market with an unrestricted lending facility. We show that when the effect of liquidity on market rates is not too small, and the monetary authority is concerned with both interest rates and liquidity conditions, then the optimal allotment policy may entail a ‘discontinuous’ reaction to initial conditions. In particular, the model predicts a threshold level of liquidity below which the central bank will not bail out the banking system. An estimation of the liquidity effect for the euro area suggests that the discontinuity might have contributed to the Eurosystem's tight response to occurrences of underbidding during the period June 2000 through March 2004.     

央行汇市干预的效果与经验

外汇市场干预是大多数国家央行管理汇率的主要手段。2008年全球金融危机以及其后的欧美债务危机,使得金融市场动荡加剧,外汇市场因避险资金的流动也日益不平静,央行的汇市干预在目标、方式、效果、影响等方面部呈现出一些新的特点,文章对此进行回顾和总结,并从将外汇干预作为宏观调控的组成部分、变被动干预为主动干预以及扩展干预模式等方面,就进一步完善央行汇市干预方式提出政策建议。     

Patterns in cross market liquidity

Academic research on liquidity has generally focused on explaining what can be called within market liquidity. That is it seeks to explain things like why one stock is more liquid than another. But there has been considerably less attention to cross market liquidity: the issue of why some securities are more liquid than others. For example, stocks are apparently far more liquid than high yield bonds. Why? Why do some markets exist (orange juice for example) while others do not (potatoes for example)? This article lays out the current academic evidence regarding liquidity across assets and explains why current theories have trouble with one item or another. The challenge then is to produce an overarching theory that offers predictions that are closer to what the data seems to imply about cross market liquidity.     

Interbank market failure and macro-prudential policies

This paper analyses the effects of several macro-prudential policy measures on the banking sector and its linkages to the macroeconomy. We employ a dynamic general equilibrium model with sticky prices, in which banks trade excess funds in the interbank lending market. We find that an increase in the liquidity requirement effectively reduces the impact of an interbank shock on the real and financial sector, while an increased capital requirement propagates only through nominal variables as inflation and interest rates. We conclude that stricter liquidity measures which limit inside money creation, dampen the severity of a breakdown in interbank lending. Targeting interbank financing directly through liquidity measures along with a moderate capital requirement generates lower welfare losses. We thereby provide a comprehensive rationale in favor of the regulatory measures in Basel III.     

公开市场业务、公告操作与国债规模

20世纪90年代以来在西方市场经济国家兴起的公告操作方式,不仅使公开市场业务突破了对国债规模要求的限制,而且在相当程度上弥补了公开市场业务的缺陷,提高了货币政策的运行效率.鉴于我国国债规模相对较小,远远不能适应公开市场操作要求的情况,我们有必要借鉴国外的经验,积极创造条件实行不依赖于国债规模且有效的货币政策操作模式即公告操作.     

银行间外汇市场的规模比较和因素分析

该文将我国银行间外汇市场规模水平与新兴经济体比较,发现市场的“换手率”偏低,市场交易的功能并不十分突出。通过进一步探索,从实证的角度发现和证明人民币汇率的可交易性不强,表现为汇率本身的波动性不足、市场流动性与市场成交水平弱相关、市场参与者的交易存在同质化现象、头寸等管理制度对参与者的交易行为具有明显的约束。文章最后研究了发达市场上汇率的交易状态以资借鉴。     

Price spreads and residential housing market liquidity

Most studies of housing market liquidity have measured liquidity in terms of time on the market (TOM), and have sought to explain TOM in terms of property characteristics and measures of market conditions. This paper departs from past studies of housing market liquidity by examining the spread between the listing and contract prices.We develop theory to explain the price spreads in the residential housing market. The model includes the list price of the home, the cost of the search, the standard deviation of offer prices, and TOM. Empirical tests using 3,597 sales for 25 months show a robust relationship of housing market spreads and these variables. Listing price and cost of search have the predicted positive coefficients, and the standard deviation of price offers is found to be negatively related to the price spread.     

欧洲央行流动性管理措施创新实践与效应

欧洲央行拥有较为完善的常规流动性供给机制,面对危机状态下市场融资功能的萎缩,欧央行通过创新和运用多种非常规流动性供给工具,为金融机构和市场提供必要的流动性支持。文章系统梳理了危机前后欧央行常规和非常规流动性管理工具的操作方式和功能,评估了非常规货币工具在市场流动性、利率和经济方面的实施效果,并探讨了其对于完善我国流动性管理的几点启示。     

Stock market dynamics with rational liquidity traders

In the Kyle (1985) finite horizon model of stock market dynamics with a trader who holds long-lived information, informed trading intensities rise with time, and the slopes of the equilibrium price schedules fall. This paper shows that this result depends crucially on the irrational liquidity trader assumption. We replace the irrational noise traders with a sequence of rational, risk averse, liquidity traders who receive endowment shocks to their holdings of the risky asset. We demonstrate that unless liquidity traders are sufficiently risk averse, the slope of equilibrium price schedule rises over time, while informed trading intensities fall. In particular, Kyle's result holds only when liquidity traders are so risk averse that they ‘over-rebalance’ their portfolio's holdings of the risky asset, so that their final holdings of the risky asset have the opposite sign of their initial position.     

An examination of the effect of stock market liquidity on bank market power

This paper investigates the spillover effects of aggregate stock market liquidity on bank market power using a sample of 44 countries and 7297 individual banks from 1999 to 2014. Country-level and bank-level analysis shows that enhancement in stock market liquidity strengthens the market power of the banking sector. This relationship is more pronounced in developed market countries and in countries with common law origin, which offer better investor protection. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to provide comprehensive empirical evidence of the complementary relationship between banks and stock markets, providing important policy implications for regulators.     

Technical analysis and central bank intervention

This paper extends genetic programming techniques to show that US foreign exchange intervention information improves technical trading rules' profitability for two of four exchange rates over part of the out-of-sample period. Rules trade contrary to intervention and are unusually profitable on days prior to intervention, indicating that intervention is intended to halt predictable trends. Intervention seems to be more successful in checking such trends in the out-of-sample (1981–98) period than in the in-sample (1975–80) period. Any improvement in performance results from more precise estimation of the relationship between current and past exchange rates, rather than from information about contemporaneous intervention.     

Central bank reserves and interbank market liquidity in the euro area

The market-oriented approach promoted by the European Central Bank in the design of its refinancing operations creates incentives to credit institutions to use actively the interbank market to manage their liquidity needs. In this context, we examine the ability of the overnight segment to guarantee the timely provision of unsecured funds to banks to smoothly absorb their liquidity shocks. This paper specifically focuses on the speed of reversion of transaction costs and available depth to their equilibrium levels in this market for overnight unsecured funds. The reported evidence points to time-varying liquidity adjustments and identifies liquidity, market activity and the institutional setting of the ECB’s refinancing operations as significant determinants of the observed resiliency regimes. Our analysis also shows how the speed of mean reversion of market liquidity, by affecting the level and the volatility of the overnight market rate, also affects the anchoring of the yield curve in the euro area.     

The price of liquidity: The effects of market conditions and bank characteristics

We study the prices that individual banks pay for liquidity (captured by borrowing rates in repos with the central bank and benchmarked by the overnight index swap) as a function of market conditions and bank characteristics. These prices depend in particular on the distribution of liquidity across banks, which is calculated over time using individual bank-level data on reserve requirements and actual holdings. Banks pay more for liquidity when positions are more imbalanced across banks, consistent with the existence of short squeezing. We also show that small banks pay more for liquidity and are more vulnerable to squeezes. Healthier banks pay less but, contrary to what one might expect, banks in formal liquidity networks do not. State guarantees reduce the price of liquidity but do not protect against squeezes.     

Pricing of time-varying liquidity risk in Finnish stock market: new evidence

Using two recently developed illiquidity measures, we estimate a conditional version of liquidity-adjusted capital asset pricing model (LCAPM), which allows for a time-varying decomposition of the total illiquidity premium into a level component and three risk components. The total estimated annualized illiquidity premium for the Finnish equities during 1997–2015 is 1.13–1.90% depending on the illiquidity measure. Of the three systematic liquidity risk components, risk arising from hedging of wealth shocks is the most important followed by commonality in liquidity risk, whereas flight to liquidity risk is not significantly priced in the Finnish stock market. Our results show that the liquidity risk is time varying, therefore the models estimating the risk-return relationship should address the issue of conditionality.     

Funding liquidity and bank risk taking

This study examines the relationship between funding liquidity and bank risk taking. Using quarterly data for U.S. bank holding companies from 1986 to 2014, we find evidence that banks having lower funding liquidity risk as proxied by higher deposit ratios, take more risk. A reduction in banks’ funding liquidity risk increases bank risk as evidenced by higher risk-weighted assets, greater liquidity creation and lower Z-scores. However, our results show that bank size and capital buffers usually limit banks from taking more risk when they have lower funding liquidity risk. Moreover, during the Global Financial Crisis banks with lower funding liquidity risk took less risk. The findings of this study have implications for bank regulators advocating greater liquidity and capital requirements for banks under Basel III.     

The price of liquidity: CD rates charged by money market funds

We examine the cost of liquidity in rates on CDs purchased by money market funds (MMFs). We find no evidence that rates vary directly with the size of CDs. However, we do find that large MMFs receive higher rates on large CDs than small MMFs. This suggests banks pay for (potential) liquidity.     

Bond market development and bank stability: Evidence from emerging markets

We investigate how bond market development shapes banks’ risk taking in terms of portfolio structure, liquidity risk, and overall bank risk. Exploiting a bank-level database of 26 emerging markets, we find that larger bond markets are associated with stronger bank liquidity positions, lower portfolio risk of banks, and higher overall stability of banks. The effect of bond market development on bank risk taking remains robust across different levels of bank size and capital sufficiency. Overall, we find new evidence of a complementary relationship between bond market development and bank soundness.     

货币政策对银行间市场流动性影响效应的实证研究及启示

银行间货币市场是央行实施货币政策的重要平台,研究货币政策对银行间市场流动性的影响对于完善商业银行日常流动性管理具有重要意义。文章在设定银行间市场流动性测度指标与梳理货币政策工具对市场流动性的影响机制的基础上,分别使用事件分析法和时间序列模型对不同政策工具的影响效应进行实证分析,得出相关分析结论,并总结其对于完善商业银行日常流动性管理的启示。