One of the surprising characteristics of the economic downturn induced by the COVID-19 pandemic is that delinquency rates in most consumer credit markets have remained low both during the downturn and the subsequent recovery. The existing literature has emphasized the roles that forbearance...

Foreign investors hold a sizable amount of U.S. Treasury securities—$7.5 trillion or about 35 percent of the total outstanding—so net purchases by foreign investors receive significant attention from a variety of sources, including academic researchers, finance professionals, and...

Take a close look at something that is widely used by the general public as "money"—a Federal Reserve note, a deposit with a bank, a balance with a nonbank payment company (such as PayPal or Venmo), or perhaps even a cryptocurrency—and ask what it means to use it as a store of value and a...

Although distributed ledgers frequently are viewed as a revolutionary technology that could transform many markets, the technology has not yet received wide-scale business adoption. This may be due in part to a lack of use cases for which the decentralized and distributed features of distributed...

The concept of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) has gained traction in recent years, with an increasing number of central banks announcing efforts to explore CBDC use cases and designs. Institutions are in various stages of research and development, with some just beginning their research...

The global crisis in 2008 reminded us of the importance of the financial sector for the macroeconomy, a lesson many had forgotten in the decades after the previous global crisis, the Great Depression. Financial risk matters. It is necessary for investment and growth, while also driving...

Foreign investors hold a sizable amount of U.S. Treasury securities—$7.5 trillion or about 35 percent of the total outstanding—so net purchases by foreign investors receive significant attention from a variety of sources, including academic researchers, finance professionals, and...

Over the pandemic, historic levels of government transfers boosted household income while household spending was severely curtailed by social distancing. This led the personal saving rate to soar (Figure 1), and we estimate that U.S. households accumulated about $2.3 trillion in savings in 2020...

In this note, we examine how changes in the yield curve slope affect the provision of credit and intermediation services by non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), including broker-dealers and hedge funds. Although these NBFIs typically do not lend directly to the non-financial sector, they...

The Primary Government Securities Dealers Reports (Form FR 2004) collect information at a weekly frequency on daily positions, cumulative transactions, financing, and fails of primary dealers in U.S. government and other fixed-income securities. The reports have been revised as of January 5,...