We investigate intermediary asset pricing theories empirically and find strong support for models that have intermediary leverage as the relevant state variable. A parsimonious model that uses detrended dealer leverage as a price-of-risk variable, and innovations to dealer leverage as a pricing...

In a market-based financial system, banking and capital market developments are inseparable, and funding conditions are closely tied to fluctuations in the leverage of market-based financial intermediaries. Offering a window on liquidity, the balance sheet growth of broker-dealers provides a...

In a market-based financial system, banking and capital market developments are inseparable. We document evidence that balance sheets of market-based financial intermediaries provide a window on the transmission of monetary policy through capital market conditions. Short-term interest rates are...

We study liquidity and systemic risk in high-value payment systems. Flows in high-value systems are characterized by high velocity, meaning that the total amount paid and received is high relative to the stock of reserves. In such systems, banks rely heavily on incoming funds to finance outgoing...

We study a contracting model of leverage and balance sheet size for financial intermediaries that fund their activities through collateralized borrowing. Leverage and balance sheet size increase together when measured risks decrease. When the loss distribution is exponential, the behavior of...

In a financial system in which balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes appear immediately as changes in net worth, eliciting responses from financial intermediaries who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked-to-market leverage is...

One of the most robust stylized facts in macroeconomics is the forecasting power of the term spread for future real activity. The economic rationale for this forecasting power usually appeals to expectations of future interest rates, which affect the slope of the term structure. In this paper,...

Central banks have a variety of tools for implementing monetary policy, but the tool that has received the most attention in the literature has been the overnight interest rate. The financial crisis that erupted in the summer of 2007 has refocused attention on other channels of monetary policy,...

Fluctuations in the aggregate balance sheets of financial intermediaries provide a window on the joint determination of asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. We document that financial intermediary balance sheets contain strong predictive power for future excess returns on a broad set of...

The financial crisis of 2007-09 highlighted the changing role of financial institutions and the growing importance of the shadow banking system, which grew out of the securitization of assets and the integration of banking with capital market developments. This trend was most pronounced in the...