We model how a cyber attack may be amplified through the U.S. financial system, focusing on the wholesale payments network. We estimate that the impairment of any of the five most active U.S. banks will result in significant spillovers to other banks, with 38 percent of the network affected on...

We examine sources of systemic risk (threshold size, complexity, and interconnectedness) with factors constructed from equity returns of large financial firms, after accounting for standard risk factors. From the factor loadings and factor returns, we estimate the implicit government subsidy for...

We examine the effects of regulatory changes on banks' cost of capital and lending. Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the value-weighted CAPM cost of capital for banks has averaged 10.5 percent and declined by more than 4 percent on a within-firm basis relative to financial crisis...

Market disruptions in response to the COVID pandemic spurred calls for the consideration of marketwide central clearing of Treasury securities, which might better enable dealers to intermediate large customer trading flows. We assess the netting efficiencies of increased central clearing using...

We analyze how systemic cyber risk in the wholesale payments network relates to adverse financial conditions. We show that at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, payment activity increased, became more concentrated, and showed intraday liquidity stress. Cyber vulnerability was elevated in late...

To combat the financial crisis that intensified in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve injected a substantial amount of liquidity into the banking system. The resulting increase in reserve balances exerted downward price pressure in the federal funds market, and the effective federal funds...

We reconsider the role of financial intermediaries in monetary economics. We explore the hypothesis that financial intermediaries drive the business cycle by way of their role in determining the price of risk. In this framework, balance sheet quantities emerge as a key indicator of risk appetite...

Although bank capital regulation permits a bank to choose freely between equity and subordinated debt to meet capital requirements, lenders and investors view debt and equity as imperfect substitutes. It follows that the mix of debt in regulatory capital should isolate the role that the market...

We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations within states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole(1997), we conclude that the theoretical affect of...