The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. In this paper, we document the significant role played by the FHLB...

We explore the network topology of the interbank payments transferred between commercial banks over the Fedwire Funds Service. We find that the network is compact despite low connectivity. The network includes a tightly connected core of money-center banks to which all other banks connect. The...

In addition to revamping existing rules for bank capital, Basel III introduces a new global framework for liquidity regulation. One part of this framework is the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR), which requires banks to hold sufficient high-quality liquid assets to survive a 30-day period of...

We present evidence on the changing dynamics of the yield curve from 1998 to2011. We identify four different phases. As expected, the financial crisis represents a period of elevated yield volatility, but it can be split into two distinct periods. The split occurs when the Federal Reserve...

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) System is a large, complex, and understudied government-sponsored liquidity facility that currently has more than $1 trillion in secured loans outstanding, mostly to commercial banks and thrifts. This paper first documents the significant role played by the FHLB...

The recent turmoil in global financial markets underscores the importance of the federal funds market as a means of distributing liquidity throughout the financial system and a tool for implementing monetary policy. In this paper, we explore the network topology of the federal funds market. We...

We develop a parsimonious model of the interbank payment system to study congestion and the role of liquidity markets in alleviating congestion. The model incorporates an endogenous instruction arrival process, scale-free topology of payments between banks, fixed total liquidity that limits...

We show how the interbank payment system can become illiquid following wide-scale disruptions. Two forces are at play in such disruptions-operational problems and changes in participants' behavior. We model the interbank payment system as an n-player game and utilize the concept of a potential...