The amount of reserves held by the U.S. banking system reached $1.5 trillion in April 2011. Some economists argue that such a large quantity of bank reserves could lead to overly expansive bank lending as the economy recovers, regardless of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy. In...

Monetary policy measures taken by the Federal Reserve as a response to the 2007-09 financial crisis and subsequent economic conditions led to a large increase in the level of outstanding reserves. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has a range of tools to control short-term market rates in...

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...

In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory that gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can pay a cost to access a central database that tracks payments made and received. Incentives must be provided to agents to...

In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory which gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can choose to have access to a central data base which keeps track of payments made and received. We show that multiple...

This paper develops an infinite-horizon model of financial institutions that borrow short-term and invest in long-term assets that can be traded in frictionless markets. Because these financial intermediaries perform maturity transformation, they are subject to potential runs. We derive distinct...

The recent financial crisis has shown that short-term collateralized borrowing may be a highly unstable source of funds in times of stress. The present paper develops a dynamic equilibrium model and analyzes under what conditions such instability can be a consequence of market-wide changes in...

This paper develops an infinite-horizon model of financial institutions that borrow short-term and invest in long-term assets that can be traded in frictionless markets. Because these financial intermediaries perform maturity transformation, they are subject to potential runs. We derive distinct...

A lesson of the recent financial crisis is that the interbank market is crucial for banks facing uncertainty regarding their liquidity needs. This article studies the efficiency of the interbank market in allocating funds. We show that the central bank should lower the interbank rate when...