During financial crises, investors demand large amounts of government-backed assets. What constitutes an orderly flight-to-liquidity? Studying how suppliers of government-backed safe assets respond to heightened demand during a crisis is challenging due to a multitude of confounding factors. In...

We show that the creation of private safe assets by shadow banks can crowd out traditional banks' supply of safe assets. The 2014-2016 money market fund reform created a large demand shock for government- or government-like safe assets. Shadow banks responded, and in particular, Federal Home...

This note is the third part in a three part series. Part 1 provides some historical background and discusses key institutional characteristics of the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) System. Part 2 highlights some of the recent trends in the FHLB system and potential drivers of those trends. This...

This note is the second part in a three part series. Part 1 provides some historical background and discusses key institutional characteristics of the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) System. This note discusses recent trends in the FHLB system and potential drivers of those trends

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system was founded in 1932 to support mortgage lending by thrifts and insurance companies. Over time, the system has grown into a provider of funding for a larger range of financial institutions, including commercial banks and insurance companies

The Federal Home Loan Banks are the less well-known siblings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since these government-sponsored enterprises were created in 1932, changes in housing finance markets have rendered largely irrelevant their original purpose of increasing the availability of mortgages....