The Federal Reserve’s 'balance-sheet normalization', which reduced aggregate reserves between 2017 and September 2019, increased repo rate distortions, the severity of rate spikes, and intraday payment timing stresses, culminating with a significant disruption in Treasury repo markets in...

The need for US dollar funding during the financial stresses in mid-March 2020, as the COVID pandemic news shocked markets, was evident in a number of countries. Notably, however, China’s dollar liquidity needs received little attention. Given China’s deepening economic and financial...

We model a simple market setting in which fragmentation of trade of the same asset across multiple exchanges improves allocative efficiency. Fragmentation reduces the inhibiting effect of price-impact avoidance on order submission. Although fragmentation reduces market depth on each exchange, it...

In the years leading up to the financial crisis that began in 2007, the core of the financial system was vulnerable to major shocks emanating from any of a variety of sources. While this particular crisis was triggered by over-levered home owners and a severe downturn in U.S. housing markets...

This note explains a new type of auction based on an existing derivatives risk-management technique known as “compression.” A compression auction can be used to convert centrally cleared contracts on an underlying benchmark, such as the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), to contracts on...