The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves...

During the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve implemented several novel programs to address adverse conditions in financial markets. Three of these temporary programs relied on an auction mechanism: the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, and the disposition of the...

This paper examines the Federal Reserve's unprecedented liquidity provision during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. It first reviews how the Fed provides liquidity in normal times. It then explains how the Fed's new and expanded liquidity facilities were intended to enable the central bank to...

This paper assesses the microstructure of the U.S. Treasury securities market, using newly available tick data from the BrokerTec electronic trading platform. Examining trading activity, bid-ask spreads, and depth for on-the-run two-, three-, five-, ten-, and thirty-year Treasury securities, we...

We characterize the microstructure of the market for Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) using novel tick data from the interdealer market. We find a marked difference in trading activity between on-the-run and off-the-run securities, as in the nominal Treasury securities market. We...

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...