The policy measures taken since the financial crisis have greatly expanded the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and have thus raised the level of aggregate bank reserves as well. Over the same period there has been a significant shift in the timing of payments made over the Federal...

The policy measures taken since the financial crisis have greatly expanded the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and have thus raised the level of aggregate bank reserves as well. Over the same period there has been a significant shift in the timing of payments made over the Federal...

The Federal Reserve's Fedwire funds transfer service - the biggest large-value payments system in the United States - has long displayed a peak of activity in the late afternoon. Theory suggests that the concentration of late-afternoon Fedwire activity reflects coordination among participating...

An examination of the Federal Reserve’s Fedwire Funds Transfer service reveals that the highest concentration of funds-transfer value occurs in the late afternoon. The authors attribute this activity peak to attempts by banks (and their customers) to coordinate payment timing more closely. By...

This paper attempts to quantify the benefits associated with operating a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM) in Fedwire, the large-value payment system of the Federal Reserve. Calibrating the model of Martin and McAndrews (2008), we find that potential gains are large compared to the likely cost of...

This paper considers the welfare effect of introducing a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM) in a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system. We study the planner's problem to get a better understanding of the economic role of an LSM and find that an LSM can achieve the planner's allocation...