Since January 1994, the Federal Reserve Board has permitted depository institutions in the United States to implement so-called retail sweep programs. The essence of these programs is computer software that dynamically reclassifies customer deposits between transaction accounts, which are...

What are "reserves," and why do banks hold them? What are "sweep accounts," and how do they work? What’s the relationship between the two? And what’s the Fed’s role in all of this? In this article, Jeff Wrase considers the effect sweep accounts have had on the market for bank reserves and...

The Federal Reserve implements its monetary policy by using open market operations in U.S. government securities to target the federal funds rate. A substantial decline in the stock of U.S. Treasury debt could interfere with the conduct of monetary policy, possibly forcing the Fed to rely more...

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between changes in the funds rate and nonborrowed reserves within a reduced form framework that allows the relationship to have two distinct patterns over time. A regime switching model a la Hamilton (1989) is estimated. The two regimes are different...