We examine the relationship between monetary policy operations and interbank borrowing and lending of funds using sovereign bonds as collateral. We first establish that, in the precrisis period, there are important but rather weak relations between these funding sources and that this...

Although the effects of economic news announcements on asset prices are well established, theserelationships are unlikely to be stable. This paper documents the time variation in the responses of yield curves and exchange rates using high-frequency data from January 2000 through August 2011....

A large literature argues that long-term interest rates appear to react far more to high-frequency (for example, daily or monthly) movements in short-term interest rates than is predicted by the standard expectations hypothesis. We find that, since 2000, such high-frequency "excess sensitivity"...

We present a parsimonious New Keynesian model that features financial vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities generate time varying downside risk of GDP growth by driving the dynamics of risk premia. Monetary policy impacts the output gap directly via the IS curve, and indirectly via its impact on...

U.S. Treasury securities fill several crucial roles in financial markets: they are a risk-free benchmark, a reference and hedging benchmark, and a reserve asset to the Federal Reserve and other financial institutions. Many of the features that make the Treasury market an attractive benchmark and...

The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) was introduced by the Federal Reserve to promote liquidity in the financing markets for Treasury and other collateral. We evaluate one aspect of the program - the extent to which it has narrowed repo spreads between Treasury collateral and less liquid...

Since December 2008, the Federal Reserve's traditional policy instrument, the target federal funds rate, has been effectively at its lower bound of zero. In order to further ease the stance of monetary policy as the economic outlook deteriorated, the Federal Reserve purchased substantial...

This paper analyzes the effects of the lower bound for interest rates on the distributions of expectations for future inflation and interest rates. We study a stylized New Keynesian model where the policy instrument is subject to a lower bound to motivate the empirical analysis. Two equilibria...

In the conduct of monetary policy, there exists a risk-return trade-off between financial conditions and financial stability, which complements monetary policy's traditional trade-off between inflation and real activity. The trade-off exists even if monetary policy does not target financial...

We build a general equilibrium model with financial frictions that impede the effectiveness of monetary policy in stimulating output. Agents with heterogeneous productivity can increase investment by levering up, but this increases interim liquidity risk. In equilibrium, the more productive...