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We examine the importance of liquidity hoarding and counterparty risk in the U.S. overnight interbank market during the financial crisis of 2008. Our findings suggest that counterparty risk plays a larger role than does liquidity hoarding: the day after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, loan terms become more sensitive to borrower characteristics. In particular, poorly performing large banks see an increase in spreads of 25 basis points, but are borrowing 1% less, on average. Worse performing banks do not hoard liquidity. While the interbank market does not freeze entirely, it does not seem to expand to meet latent demand.

Liquidity risk in banking has been attributed to transactions deposits and their potential to spark runs or panics. We show instead that transactions deposits help banks hedge liquidity risk from unused loan commitments. Bank stock-return volatility increases with unused commitments, but only for banks with low levels of transactions deposits. This depositlending hedge becomes more powerful during periods of tight liquidity, when nervous investors move funds into their banks. Our results reverse the standard notion of liquidity risk at banks, where runs from depositors had been seen as the cause of trouble.

Extreme disruptions in the interbank market severely hampered the broader financial system during the 2007-08 financial crisis. We use Fedwire data to estimate fed funds trades and track banks' intraday balances. We show empirical evidence of banks' precautionary holding of reserves and reluctance to lend linked to documented extreme fed funds rate volatility, including the fed funds rate spiking above the discount rate and crashing to zero. We develop a model of constrained banks that makes new predictions and provides a unified explanation for the stark anomalies during the crisis, our empirical findings, and previous stylized facts from normal times.

Starting with a blank slate, how could one design the institutions of a central bank for the United States? This paper explores the question of how to design a central bank, drawing on the relevant economic literature and historical experiences while staying free from concerns about how the Fed got to be what it is today or the short-term political constraints it has faced at various times. The goal is to provide an opinionated overview that puts forward the trade-offs associated with different choices and identifies areas where there are clear messages about optimal central bank design.

For many years prior to the global financial crisis, the Federal Open Market Committee set a target for the federal funds rate and achieved that target through small purchases and sales of securities in the open market. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a superabundant level of reserve balances in the banking system having been created as a result of the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase programs, this approach to implementing monetary policy will no longer work. This paper provides a primer on the Fed's implementation of monetary policy. We use the standard textbook model to illustrate why the approach used by the Federal Reserve before the financial crisis to keep the federal funds rate near the Federal Open Market Committee's target will not work in current circumstances, and explain the approach that the Committee intends to use instead when it decides to begin raising short-term interest rates.

This paper estimates a New Keynesian model to draw inferences about the behavior of the Federal Reserve's unobserved inflation target. The results indicate that the target rose from 1 1/4% in 1959 to over 8% in the mid to late 1970s before falling back below 2 1/2% in 2004. The results also provide some support for the hypothesis that over the entire post-war period, Federal Reserve policy has systematically translated short-run price pressures set off by supply-side shocks into more persistent movements in inflation itself, although considerable uncertainty remains about the true source of shifts in the inflation target.

The dollar is the king of international finance. No other contender has come close to stealing its crown as the world’s reserve currency. Our finance correspondent, Josh Roberts, explains why.

The nature and scope of the Federal Reserve's authority and the structure of its decision making are now \"on the table'' to an extent that has not been seen since 1935, and the Fed's vaunted independence is under some attack. This essay asks what the Federal Reserve should—and shouldn't—do, leaning heavily on the concept of economies of scope. In particular, I conclude that the central bank should monitor and regulate systemic risk because preservingfinancial stability is (a) closely aligned with the standard objectives of monetary policy and (b) likely to require lender of last resort powers. I also conclude that the Fed should supervise large financial institutions because that function is so closely to regulating systemic risk. However, several other functions now performed by the Fed could easily be done elsewhere.

Realizing that their traditional instruments were inadequate for responding to the crisis that began on August 9, 2007, Federal Reserve officials improvised. Beginning in mid-December 2007, they implemented a series of changes directed at ensuring that liquidity would be distributed to those institutions that needed it most. Conceptually, this meant America's central bankers shifted from focusing solely on the size of their balance sheet, which they use to keep the overnight interbank lending rate close to their chosen target, to manipulating the composition of their assets as well. In this paper, I examine the Federal Reserve's conventional and unconventional responses to the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

Several key episodes in the 100-year history of the Federal Reserve have been referred to in various contexts with the adjective “Great” attached to them: the Great Experiment of the Federal Reserve's founding, the Great Depression, the Great Inflation and subsequent disinflation, the Great Moderation, and the recent Great Recession. Here, I'll use this sequence of “Great” episodes to discuss the evolution over the past 100 years of three key aspects of Federal Reserve policymaking: the goals of policy, the policy framework, and accountability and communication. The changes over time in these three areas provide a useful perspective, I believe, on how the role and functioning of the Federal Reserve have changed since its founding in 1913, as well as some lessons for the present and for the future.