Banks' Reserve Management, Transaction Costs, and the Timing of Federal Reserve Intervention

We use daily data on bank reserves and overnight interest rates to document a striking pattern in the high-frequency behavior of the U.S. market for federal funds: depository institutions tend to hold more reserves during the last few days of each quot;reserve maintenance period,quot; when the opportunity cost of holding reserves is typically highest. We then propose and analyze a model federal funds market where uncertain liquidity flows transaction costs induce banks to delay trading bid up interest rates at end each period. In this context, central bank's interest-rate-smoothing policy causes high supply liquid be associated with around settlement days