Until 1935, Federal Reserve Banks from time to time purchased short-term securities directly from the United States Treasury to facilitate Treasury cash management operations. The authority to undertake such purchases provided a robust safety net that ensured Treasury could meet its obligations...

Modern money and capital markets are not free-form bazaars where participants are left alone to contract as they choose, but rather are circumscribed by a variety of statutes, regulations, and behavioral norms. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the introduction of a set of norms...

Ever since the emergence of regular and predictable issuance of coupon-bearing Treasury debt in the 1970s, thirty years has marked the outer boundary of Treasury bond maturities. However, longer-term bonds were not unknown in earlier years. Seven such bonds, including one with a forty-year term,...

We show that Treasury bill auction procedures create classes of price-equivalent discount rates for bills with fewer than seventy-two days to maturity. We argue that it is inefficient for market participants to bid at a discount rate that is not the minimum rate in its class. The inefficiency of...