Does the federal funds rate respond to shocks when aggregate reserves are in the trillions of dollars? Has banks’ demand for reserves moved over time? We provide a structural time-varying estimate of the slope of the reserve demand curve over 2010-21. We estimate a time-varying vector...

The quantity of reserves in the U.S. banking system has risen dramatically since September 2008. Some commentators have expressed concern that this pattern indicates that the Federal Reserve's liquidity facilities have been ineffective in promoting the flow of credit to firms and households....

In this paper, we argue that the observed difference in the cost of intraday and overnight liquidity is part of an optimal payments system design. In our environment, the interest charged on overnight liquidity affects output, while the cost of intraday liquidity only affects the distribution of...

This paper studies an overlapping generations economy with capital where limited communication and stochastic relocation create an endogenous transactions role for fiat money. We assume a production function with a knowledge externality (Romer-style) that nests economies with endogenous growth...

The amount of reserves held by the U.S. banking system reached $1.5 trillion in April 2011. Some economists argue that such a large quantity of bank reserves could lead to overly expansive bank lending as the economy recovers, regardless of the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy. In...

What role does stock investment play in the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy? We study this question using a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous households. Following a monetary tightening, stock market participants rebalance their investments away from stocks, in line with...

Savers with uncertain life spans cannot stick to long-term investment plans when they invest directly in liquid assets. Before horizons are known, all savers will plan to roll over their short-term assets if returns turn out high. Ex post, the short-term investors will consume their liquid...

We use quasi-random access to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to identify the causal effect of refinancing into a lower-rate mortgage on borrower balance sheet outcomes. Refinancing substantially reduces borrower default rates on mortgages and other debt. Refinancing also causes...

We argue that the time-varying regional distribution of housing equity influences the aggregate consequences of monetary policy through its effects on mortgage refinancing. Using detailed loan-level data, we show that regional differences in housing equity affect refinancing and spending...

A major lesson of the recent financial crisis is that the ability of banks to withstand liquidity shocks and to provide lending to one another is crucial for financial stability. This paper studies the functioning of the interbank lending market and the optimal policy of a central bank in...