Using a unique data set of individual professional forecasts, we document disagreement about the future path of monetary policy, particularly at longer horizons. The stark differences in short rate forecasts imply strong disagreement about the risk-return trade-off of longer-term bonds....

Economic theory predicts that intertemporal decisions depend critically on expectations about future outcomes. Using the universe of professional survey forecasts for the United States, we document the behavior of the entire term structure of expectations for output growth, inflation, and the...

Banks' leverage choices represent a delicate balancing act. Credit discipline argues for more leverage, while balance-sheet opacity and ease of asset substitution argue for less. Meanwhile, regulatory safety nets promote ex post financial stability, but also create perverse incentives for banks...

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...

This paper examines the common factors that drive the returns of U.S. bank holding companies from 1997 to 2005. We compare a range of market models from a basic one-factor model to a nine-factor model that includes the standard Fama-French factors and additional factors thought to be...

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...

Agency MBSs with diverse characteristics are traded in parallel through individualized specified pool (SP) contracts and standardized to-be-announced (TBA) contracts. This parallel trading environment generates distinctive effects on MBS pricing and trading: (1) Although cheapest-to-deliver...

Banks hold liquid and illiquid assets. An illiquid bank that receives a liquidity shock sells assets to liquid banks in exchange for cash. We characterize the constrained efficient allocation as the solution to a planner's problem and show that the market equilibrium is constrained inefficient,...

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 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...