The quantity of reserves in the U.S. banking system has risen dramatically since September 2008. Some commentators have expressed concern that this pattern indicates that the Federal Reserve's liquidity facilities have been ineffective in promoting the flow of credit to firms and households....

Liquidity hoarding by banks and extreme volatility of the fed funds rate have been widely seen as severely disrupting the interbank market and the broader financial system during the 2007-08 financial crisis. Using data on intraday account balances held by banks at the Federal Reserve and...

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are accused of bearing a strong responsibility for contributing to the subprime crisis by having been deliberately too lax in the ratings of some structured products. In response to this accusation, CRAs argue that such an attitude would be too dangerous for them,...

"<p> Franklin Allen, James McAndrews and Philip Strahan, October 2001<p> <p>Abstract: E-finance is defined as "The provision of financial services and markets using electronic communication and computation". In this paper we outline research issues related to e-finance that we believe set the stage for...</p></p></p>

We study two designs for a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM), a queuing arrangement used with an interbank settlement system. With a balance-reactive LSM, banks can set a balance threshold below which payments are not released from the queue, an action not possible with a receipt-reactive LSM....

"In this article, we consider the case for an intraday market for reserves. We discuss the separate roles of intraday and overnight reserves and argue that an intraday market could be organized in the same way as the overnight market. We present arguments in favor of and against a market for...

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 provides a theory of two-sided market dynamics with arguably better microfoundations. These alternative microfoundations focus on observable heterogeneities of both sides of the market in a competitive framework. The theory is rich in empirical predictions and is less dependent on a...

This paper studies the incentives of participants in a real-time gross settlement system with and without the addition of a liquidity-saving mechanism (LSM). Participants in the model face a liquidity shock and different costs for delaying payments. They trade off the cost of delaying a payment...

Much of the research on financial services in low-income countries has focused on micro-credit programs. Much less attention has been paid to the design of depository services, although many more low-income people use depository services than get access to credit. Having access to depository...