We study the fragility of discretionary liquidity provision by major financial intermediaries during systemic events. The laboratory of our study is the recent collapse of the auction rate securities (ARS) market. Using a comprehensive dataset constructed from auction reports and intraday...

This paper presents a model of repo rehypothecation in which dealers intermediate funds and collateral between cash lenders (e.g., money market funds) and prime brokerage clients (e.g., hedge funds). Dealers take advantage of their position as intermediaries, setting different repo terms with...

What are the consequences of a potential fire sale stemming from the exemption of repurchase agreements (repos) from automatic stay? This paper shows that repo's exemption from stay alters firms' financing and investment decisions ex ante. Specifically, a stay exemption changes firms' investment...

During the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve established two emergency facilities for broker-dealers. One provided collateralized loans. The other lent securities against a pledge of other securities, effectively providing collateral upgrades, an operation similar to activities...

When collateral is safe, there are less opportunities for things to go wrong. We examine matching between collateral and creditors in the commercial real estate mortgage market by comparing loans in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) conduits and bank portfolios. We model CMBS...

Focusing on downgrades as stress events that drive the selling of corporate bonds, we document that the illiquidity of stressed bonds has increased after the Volcker Rule. Dealers regulated by the Rule have decreased their market-making activities while non-Volcker-affected dealers have stepped...

Estimates of investor expectations of government support of large financial firms are often based on large financial firms' lower borrowing costs relative to smaller financial firms. Using pricing data on credit default swaps (CDS) and corporate bonds over the period 2004 to 2013, however, we...

We study how competition between banks and non-banks affects lending standards. Banks have private information about some borrowers and are subject to capital requirements to mitigate risk-taking incentives from deposit insurance. Non-banks are uninformed and market forces determine their...

The Basel Committee promulgates bank regulatory standards that many major economies enact to a significant extent. One element of the Basel III capital standards is a system of capital surcharges for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). If the purpose of the surcharges is to ensure the...

Did government mortgage programs mitigate the adverse economic effects of the financial crisis? We find that counties with greater participation in traditional government mortgage programs experienced less severe economic downturns during the Great Recession. In particular, counties with higher...