Settlement fails, which occur when securities are not delivered and paid for on the date scheduled by the buyer and seller, can expose market participants to the risk of loss due to counterparty insolvency. This article examines the institutional and economic setting of the fails problem that...

During the 1970s, U.S. Treasury officials revised the framework within which they selected the maturities of new notes and bonds. Previously, they chose maturities on an offering-by-offering basis. By 1982, the Treasury had ceased these "tactical" sales and was selling notes and bonds on a...

The U.S. Treasury began auctioning zero-coupon bills in 1929 to complement the fixed-price subscription offerings of coupon-bearing certificates of indebtedness, notes, and bonds that it had previously relied upon. Bills soon came to play a central role in Treasury cash and debt management. This...

Contracting conventions for repurchase agreements, or repos, changed significantly in the 1980s. The growth of the repo market, new uses for repos, and the emergence of new and previously unappreciated risks prompted market participants to revise their contracting conventions. This article...

The substitution of auctions for fixed-price offerings was expected to lower the U.S. Treasury's cost of financing the federal debt. Despite this and other potential benefits, the Treasury failed in both 1935 and 1963 in its attempts to introduce regular auction sales of coupon-bearing...

The conversion of U.S. Treasury securities from physical to book-entry form was a major event in the history of the Treasury market. The conversion, which began in 1966, resulted in an automated system that has greatly reduced market operating costs and risks. This article examines the origins...

The TMPG fails charge for U.S. Treasury securities provides that a buyer of Treasury securities can claim monetary compensation from the seller if the seller fails to deliver the securities on a timely basis. The charge was introduced in May 2009 and replaced an existing market convention of...

The issues of liquidity and price transparency in derivatives markets have taken on greater import given regulatory efforts under way to improve their transparency. To date, the lack of transaction data has impeded the understanding of how the inflation swap and other derivatives markets...

This paper was presented at the conference "Economic Statistics: New Needs for the Twenty-First Century," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, and the National Association for Business Economics, July 11, 2002. Securities liquidity...

The issues of liquidity and price transparency in derivatives markets have taken on greater import given regulatory efforts under way to improve their transparency. To date, the lack of transaction data has impeded the understanding of how the inflation swap and other derivatives markets...