This paper explores financial stability policies for the shadow banking system. I tie policy options to economic mechanisms for shadow banking that have been documented in the literature. I then illustrate the role of shadow bank policies using three examples: agency mortgage real estate...

One year after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA), regulators proposed several of the rules required for its implementation. In this paper, I discuss some aspects of proposed DFA rules in light of shadow banking. The topics are risk-retention rules for securitized products and the impact of...

In a financial system where balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes show up immediately in changes in net worth, and elicit responses from financial intermediaries, who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked to market leverage is...

We present a microfounded New Keynesian model that features financial vulnerabilities. Financial intermediaries' occasionally binding value-at-risk constraints give rise to variation in the pricing of risk that generates time-varying risk in the conditional mean and volatility of the output gap....

This paper examines market liquidity in the post-crisis era in light of concerns that regulatory changes might have reduced dealers' ability and willingness to make markets. We begin with a discussion of the broader trading environment, including an overview of regulations and their potential...

The size and the leverage of financial market investors and the elasticity of demand of unlevered investors define MinMaSS, the smallest market size that can support a given degree of leverage. The financial system's potential for financial crises can be measured by the stability ratio, the...

The rapid growth of the market-based financial system since the mid-1980s changed the nature of financial intermediation in the United States profoundly. Within the market-based financial system, “shadow banks” are particularly important institutions. Shadow banks are financial...