monetary policy asset prices and liquidity in over the counter markets we develop a model where agents can allocate their wealth between a liquid asset which can be used to purchase consumption goods and an illiquid asset which represents a better store of value should a consumption opportunity arise agents may visit a frictional over the counter secondary asset market where they can exchange illiquid for liquid assets we characterize how monetary policy affects both the issue price and the secondary market price of the asset we also show that in contrast to conventional wisdom search and bargaining frictions in the secondary asset market can improve welfare if inflation is low

the bond old bond spread abstract i document the profits on a trade that is long the old 30 year treasury bond and short the new 30 year treasury bond and is rolled over every auction cycle from june 1995 to november 1999 despite the systematic convergence of the spread over the auction cycle the average profits are close to zero the difference in repo market financing rates between the two bonds is a significant cost of carry in this trade i show that variation in the bond old bond spread is driven by the treasury supply of 30 year bonds as well as aggregate factors affecting investors preference for liquid assets

bond liquidity premia recent asset pricing models of limits to arbitrage emphasize the role of funding conditions faced by financial intermediaries in the us the repo market is the key funding market then the premium of on the run u s treasury bonds should share a common component with risk premia in other markets

the policy preferences of the us federal reserve in this paper we model and explain us macroeconomic outcomes subject to the discipline that monetary policy is set optimally exploiting the restrictions that come from optimal policymaking we estimate the parameters in the federal reserve s policy objective function together with the parameters in its optimization constraints for the period following volcker s appointment as chairman we estimate the implicit inflation target to be around 1 4 and show that policymakers assigned a significant weight to interest rate smoothing we show that the estimated optimal policy provides a good description of us data for the 1980s and 1990s

price stability vs output stability tales of federal reserve administrations abstract this study disentangles policy parameters from those describing private sector behavior by simultaneously estimating an empirical model for inflation and output along with a loss function for the last three federal reserve administrations three important results emerge first the federal reserve appears to put more emphasis on price stability than output stability when the entire sample is considered second and more importantly the loss function parameters exhibit structural break at the time paul volcker was appointed chairman the accommodative characteristics of monetary policy were replaced with a more active policy towards controlling inflation finally interest rate smoothing is found to be an important feature of the monetary policymaking process for all three administrations

generalized method of moments and inverse control abstract this paper presents a generalized method of moments algorithm for estimating the structural parameters of a macroeconomic model subject to the restriction that the coefficients of the monetary policy rule minimize the central bank s expected loss function the algorithm combines least squares normal equations with moment restrictions derived from the first order necessary conditions of the auxiliary optimization we assess the performance of the algorithm with monte carlo simulations using three increasingly complex models we find that imposing the optimizing restrictions when they are true improves estimation accuracy and that imposing those restrictions when they are false biases estimates of some of the structural parameters but not of the policy rule coefficients

the term structure of illiquidity premia abstract we investigate the term structure of bond market illiquidity premia and show that the term structure varies greatly over time short and long end are strictly separated suggesting that different economic factors drive different parts of the term structure we propose a stylized theoretical model which implies that current trading needs of investors determine the short end the long term risk of being forced to liquidate bond positions determines the long end empirical evidence supports these predictions while short term liquidation risk captured by asset market volatilities drives the short end the long end depends on the long term economic outlook

stochastic dominance decision rules when the attributes are utility independent in multivariate decisions under risk assessing the complete utility function can be a major obstacle decision rules are investigated which characterize uniformly better alternatives with respect to a whole class of utility functions in this paper independence assumptions are imposed on the preference structure while the levels of attributes may be stochastically dependent in an arbitrary way the utilities considered are additive multiplicative or multilinear necessary and sufficient conditions are developed for uniform decisions over utilities with common substitutional structure and where the univariate conditional utilities show qualitative properties such as risk aversion the rules are direct extensions of known univariate rules and easy to evaluate

do european banks with a covered bond program issue asset backed securities for funding abstract the decline in the issuance of asset backed securities abss since the financial crisis and the comparative advantage of covered bonds cbs as a funding alternative to abss raise the question of whether banks still issue abss as a way to receive funding by applying double hurdle regression models to a dataset of 134 european banks observed during the period from 2007 to 2013 this study reveals that banks with a covered bond program cbp securitize ceteris paribus less of their assets the estimated difference in abs issuance is driven mainly by banks being more likely to issue abss as a funding tool rather than trying to manage their credit risk exposure or to meet regulatory capital requirements consistently a worse liquidity funding position results in higher levels of securitization only for banks without a cbp

salomon brothers and the may 1991 treasury auction analysis of a market corner abstract in may 1991 the treasury sold 12 29 billion in two year notes through improper bidding salomon brothers gained control of at least 86 percent of the issue this study investigates the impact of salomon s attempted corner by examining the postauction price behaviour of the two year note based on a no arbitrage relation the results show that the two year note was substantially overpriced for approximately six weeks following the auction the typical mispricing during this period is estimated at 0 16 to 0 25 percent of par in dollar terms the aggregate misvaluation averaged 20 30 million and by controlling the supply of the issue salomon stood to gain substantially from the squeeze

multivariate decisions with unknown price vector abstract we consider a class of decision makers who have to choose among different random bundles of commodities it is assumed that they maximize expected utility and their utility functions depend only on the monetary value of the bundles of commodities stochastic dominance conditions are provided when the price vector is assumed unknown risk aversion and constraints on the price vectors are considered as particular cases the results are compared with other approaches to multivariate decisions

inference in nonlinear econometric models with structural change this paper extends the classical test for structural change in linear regression models see chow 1960 to a wide variety of nonlinear models estimated by a variety of different procedures wald lagrange multiplier like and likelihood ratio like test statistics are introduced the results allow for heterogeneity and temporal dependence of the observations in the process of developing the above tests the paper also provides a compact presentation of general unifying results for estimation and testing in nonlinear parametric econometric models

term premiums in bond returns abstract this paper examines expected returns on u s treasury bills and on u s government bond portfolios expected bill returns are estimated from forward rates and from sample average returns both estimation methods indicate that expected returns on bills tend to peak at eight or nine months and never increase monotonically out to twelve months reliable inferences are limited to treasury bills and thus to maturities up to a year the variability of longer term bond returns preempts precise conclusions about their expected returns

the effects of inflation uncertainty on interest rates a nonlinear approach in this article we investigate the effects of inflation variability on short term interest rates within a nonlinear smooth transition regression framework the test results suggest that only the conditional mean of the inflation is a nonlinear process whereas the conditional variance is time variant but linear using the square root of conditional variance as a proxy for inflation risk we estimate fisher equation augmented with inflation risk although the estimated fisher equations suggest that inflation risk reduces short term interest rates we find that the effects of inflation risk on interest rates are regime dependent particularly we find that the negative effects of inflation variability on nominal rates are greater in low inflationary regimes when compared to high inflationary regimes on the other hand it is found that both inflation and inflation uncertainty raise the expected inflation effect

dynamic portfolio choice with frictions abstract we show how portfolio choice can be modeled in continuous time with transitory and persistent transaction costs multiple assets multiple signals predicting returns and general signal dynamics the objective function is derived from the limit of discrete time models with endogenous transaction costs due to optimal dealer behavior we solve the model explicitly and the intuitive solution is also the limit of the solutions of the corresponding discrete time models we show how the optimal high frequency trading strategy depends on the nature of the trading costs which in turn depend on dealers inventory dynamics finally we provide equilibrium implications and illustrate the model s broader applicability to micro and macro economics monetary policy and political economy

revealed preference of the federal reserve using inverse control theory to interpret the policy equation of a vector autoregression how close is observed federal reserve policy to policy that would be optimal in the control theory sense the question is addressed by using an inverse control methodology federal reserve policy is characterized by a feedback equation for either changes in the interest rate or money stock optimal policy is characterized by solution of the ricatti equation parameters are estimated that characterize the relative importance to the federal reserve of stabilizing output inflation interest rates and money growth the period of study is 1947 through 1992 evidence is uncovered that policy is optimal within distinct regimes

competing for order flow in otc markets we develop a model of a two sided asset market in which trades are intermediated by dealers and are bilateral dealers compete to attract order flow by posting the terms at which they execute trades which can include prices quantities and execution times and investors direct their orders toward dealers that offer the most attractive terms of trade equilibrium outcomes have the following properties first investors face a trade off between trading costs and speeds of execution second the asset market is endogenously segmented in the sense that investors with different asset valuations and different asset holdings will trade at different speeds and different costs for example under a leontief technology to match investors and dealers per unit trading costs decrease with the size of the trade in accordance with the evidence from the market for corporate bonds third dealers implicit bargaining powers are endogenous and typically vary across sub markets finally we obtain a rich set of comparative statics both analytically by studying a limiting economy where trading frictions are small and numerically for instance we find that the relationship between trading costs and dealers bargaining power can be hump shaped

a search based theory of the on the run phenomenon we propose a model in which assets with identical cash flows can trade at different prices infinitely lived agents can establish long positions in a search spot market or short positions by first borrowing an asset in a search repo market we show that short sellers can endogenously concentrate in one asset because of search externalities and the constraint that they must deliver the asset they borrowed that asset enjoys greater liquidity a higher lending fee specialness and trades at a premium consistent with no arbitrage we derive closed form solutions for small frictions and provide a calibration generating realistic on the run premia

slow moving capital we study three cases in which specialized arbitrageurs lost significant amounts of capital and as a result became liquidity demanders rather than providers the effects on security markets were large and persistent prices dropped relative to fundamentals and the rebound took months while multi strategy hedge funds who were not capital constrained increased their positions a large fraction of these funds actually acted as net sellers consistent with the view that information barriers within a firm not just relative to outside investors can lead to capital constraints for trading desks with mark to market losses our findings suggest that real world frictions impede arbitrage capital this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

liquidity maturity and the yields on u s treasury securities the efrect8 of aaaet liquidity on expected retuma for ts with infinite maturities toc ka are eumined for bonda treuury notes and bills with matched maturities of lellll than 6 months the yield to maturity ill higher on notes which have lower liquidity the yield di1ferential between notes and billa is a decreuing and convex function of the time to maturity the results provide a robult confirmation of the liquidity effect in auet pricing this paper studies empirically the effects of the liquidity of capital assets on their prices amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 proposed that liquidity affects asset prices because investors require a compensation for bearing transaction costs transaction costs paid whenever the asset is traded form a sequence of cash outflows the discounted value of this cost stream proxies for the value 1088 due to illiquidity which lowers the asset s value for any given cash flow that the asset generates 1 as a result the return on assets should be an increasing function of their illiquidity other things equal for stocks the illiquidity effect is expected to be strong because their transaction cost sequence is infinite amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 demonstrated that common stocks with lower liquidity yielded significantly higher average returns after controlling for risk and for other factors these results on the importance of liquidity in the pricing of stocks raise additional questions i does the liquidity effect depend on the specific controls used by amihud and mendelson 1986 1989 1 ii does illiquidity have a similarly strong effect on the pricing of bonds whose maturities are finite and iii if liquidity affects bond yields how is this effect related to the bond s time to maturity

solution and estimation of re macromodels with optimal policy macro models of monetary policy typically involve forward looking behavior except in rare circumstances we have to apply some numerical method to find the optimal policy and the rational expectations equilibrium this paper summarizes a few useful methods and shows how they can be combined with a kalman filter to estimate the deep model parameters with maximum likelihood simulations of a macro model with staggered price setting interest rate elastic output and optimal monetary policy illustrate the properties of this estimation approach

rockets and feathers in power futures markets evidence from the second phase of the eu ets abstract this paper examines the possibility of asymmetric transmission of co 2 prices to electricity futures prices in the second phase of the european emission trading scheme we would like to assess whether output prices tend to respond more quickly to input price increases than decreases this phenomenon is known as rockets and feathers in the literature compared to zachmann and von hirschhausen 2008 who carried out a similar analysis for germany in the first phase of the emission trading scheme with data from 2005 to 2006 our study spans a longer timeframe july 2007 june 2010 with a presumably more mature permit market and includes three additional european countries france belgium and the netherlands results do not provide empirical evidence of statistically significant differences in the response of power prices to positive and negative shocks in co 2 allowance and fuel markets

tax effects in term structure estimation this study is a refinement and an extension of an earlier study by mcculloch of tax effects in the regression equation for term structure estimation this study includes tests for tax effects and heteroskedasticity a reconsideration of the need for an instrumental variable and a search for the capital gains tax rate in addition to the ordinary income tax rate there are two major findings 1 statistically significant taxinduced bias in the non tax adjusted equation and 2 evidence that the capital gains tax is misspecified in the tax adjusted equation it is well known e g see 4 2 pp 727 30 and 25 that the yield curve is an imperfect surrogate for the term structure of interest rates and various methods have been developed to estimate the term structure directly by regressing prices on payments in a sample of default free securities 1 since investors are concerned with the after tax payments on securities it is desirable to incorporate tax effects in term structure estimation mcculloch 22 and schaefer 26 29 have employed different approaches to the tax effect problem mcculloch employed the regression approach and searched for a single tax rate

the un importance of forward looking behavior in price specifications the seminal work of edmund s phelps 1978 john b taylor 1980 and guillermo a calvo 1983 developed forward looking models of price determination that imparted inertia to the price level these models incorporate expectations of future prices and excess demand by imposing constraints typically lag lead symmetry constraints that force future variables to enter the specification in this paper the author tests the empirical significance of future prices in specifications like those of taylor he finds that expectations of future prices are empirically unimportant in explaining price and inflation behavior however the dynamics of a model that includes a purely backward looking inflation specification differ substantially and not altogether pleasingly from those with a forward looking specification copyright 1997 by ohio state university press

negative nominal interest rates and the liquidity premium abstract this paper investigates the phenomenon whereby the most recently issued on the run us treasury bond is more heavily traded and thereby accrues a liquidity premium this premium is shown to be related to the time the asset will remain heavily traded and sufficient to cause negative forward nominal interest rates when compared with the prices of similar less liquid bonds

are larger treasury issues more liquid evidence from bill reopenings this paper makes use of a natural experiment of the u s treasury department to examine the relationship between treasury security issue size and liquidity treasury bills that were first issued with 52 weeks to maturity and then reopened at 26 weeks are shown to be more liquid than comparable maturity bills that were first issued with 26 weeks to maturity the relationship is less pronounced when bills are on the run the most recently auctioned bills of a given maturity than when they are off the run and persists when controlling for other factors that affect liquidity the reopened bills are found to have higher yields lower prices than comparable maturity bills showing that the indirect liquidity benefits of reopenings are more than offset by the direct supply costs

trading in derivatives when the underlying is scarce abstract regulatory restrictions and market frictions can constrain the aggregate quantity of long and short positions in a security when these constraints bind we refer to the security as scarce and its price becomes distorted relative to its value in a frictionless market we show that an otherwise redundant derivative can reduce the price distortion of the underlying security by relaxing its scarcity we also show that it is especially important to analyze the underlying and derivative markets jointly when evaluating the impact of regulation such as short sales bans and position limits in derivatives that restricts trade

a simple empirical measure of central banks conservatism in this paper we suggest a simple empirical and model independent measure of central banks conservatism based on the taylor curve this new indicator can easily be extended in time and space whatever the underlying monetary regime of the considered countries we demonstrate that it evolves in accordance with the monetary experiences of 32 oecd member countries from 1980 and is largely equivalent to the model based measure provided by krause mendez southern economic journal 2005 we finally bring forward the interest of such an indicator for further empirical analysis dealing with the preferences of central banks

changes in federal reserve preferences abstract using a model of optimizing central bank behavior i estimate the dynamic behavior of preferences which are captured by the relative weight put on stabilizing inflation versus minimizing the output gap unlike previous work i let this parameter vary continuously over time there is a drastic but steady rise in the weight on inflation around the appointment of paul volcker however i find variation in preferences throughout the sample period the results suggest that preference changes have been more complex than typically assumed in the literature the estimated preference series is used to perform counterfactual experiments and to construct a new measure of monetary shocks

equilibrium pricing and trading volume under preference uncertainty information collection processing and dissemination financial institutions is challenging this can delay the observation by traders of the exact capital charges and constraints of their institution during this delay traders face preference uncertainty in this context we study optimal trading strategies and equilibrium prices in a continuous centralized market we focus on liquidity shocks during which preference uncertainty is likely to matter most preference uncertainty generates allocative ineficiency but need not reduce prices traders progressively learning about the preferences of their institution conduct round trip trades which generate excess volume relative to the frictionless market in a cross section of liquidity shocks the initial price drop is positively correlated with total trading volume across traders the number of round trips is negatively correlated with trading profits and average inventory

price informativeness and predictability how liquidity can help information asymmetry and liquidity concentration has been widely discussed in literatures this study shows how liquidity influences not only forecasting performances of term structure estimation but also information transmission and price adjustment across markets our analysis helps understanding how extreme market movements affect one another this study examines and provides a rationale for incorporating liquidity in estimating term structure forecasting performance can be greatly enhanced when conditioning on trading liquidity it reduces information asymmetry in the sense of easley and o hara 2004 and burlacu et al 2007 we adopt a time series forecasting model following diebold and li 2006 to compare behaviour of forecasted price errors our findings indicate that forecasted price errors in markets with less depth would influence those with more information asymmetry induces volatile trading first and then price adjustment is transmitted to another market due to insufficient market dep

the dynamics of financially constrained arbitrage we develop a model of financially constrained arbitrage and use it to study the dynamics of arbitrage capital liquidity and asset prices arbitrageurs exploit price discrepancies between assets traded in segmented markets and in doing so provide liquidity to investors a collateral constraint limits their positions as a function of capital we show that the dynamics of arbitrage activity are self correcting following a shock that depletes arbitrage capital profitability increases and this allows capital to be gradually replenished spreads increase more and recover faster for more volatile trades although arbitrageurs cut their positions in these trades the least when arbitrage capital is more mobile across markets liquidity in each market generally becomes less volatile but the reverse may hold for aggregate liquidity because of mobility induced contagion

limits to arbitrage and the term structure of bond illiquidity premiums abstract theoretical models suggest that the relation of speculators capital and market liquidity is highly nonlinear changes in capital only marginally affect liquidity when capital is available abundantly but have a large effect when capital is scarce in this paper we confirm this relation within a regime switching model using three broad measures of german bond market liquidity we then analyze how the term structure of illiquidity premiums of german agency bonds is related to intermediaries capital and foreign flows illiquidity premiums are related to both variables only in the stress regime the effect of intermediaries capital is most strongly pronounced at the short end of the term structure in contrast flows into and out of the illiquid bond market segment constitute a level effect as they are related to illiquidity premiums of all maturities

how much can marketability affect security values how marketability affects security prices is one of the most important issues in finance we derive a simple analytical upper bound on the value of marketability using option pricing theory we show that discounts for lack of marketability can potentially be large even when the illiquidity period is very short this analysis also provides a benchmark for assessing the potential costs of exchange rules and regulatory requirements restricting the ability of investors to trade when desired furthermore these results provide new insights into the relation between discounts for lack of marketability and the length of the marketability restriction

the dynamic impacts of monetary policy an exercise in tentative identification it is currently popular to identify monetary policy shocks with innovations in some measure of reserves or in the federal funds rate these assumptions about the interest elasticity of the supply of or demand for reserves imply monetary policy shocks that produce dynamic responses of macroeconomic variables that are anomalous relative to traditional monetary analyses this paper tentatively identifies supply and demand shocks in the markets for reserves and m2 for the 1980s and contrasts them with results for the 1970s in the later period identified monetary policy shocks have dynamic impacts that are fully consistent with traditional analyses

inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state accounting for the uncertainty inherent in real time perceptions of the state of the economy is believed to be critical for the analysis of historical monetary policy we investigate this claim through the lens of a small scale new keynesian model with optimal discretionary policy and partial information about the state the model is estimated using maximum likelihood on us data over the volcker greenspan bernanke regime a comparison of our estimates to those from a version of the model with complete information reveals that under partial information i the federal reserve demonstrates a significant concern for stabilizing fluctuations in the output gap and ii the discrepancy between optimal and observed policy behavior is smaller

do markets care who chairs the central bank this paper assesses the effects of central bank governor appointments on financial market expectations of monetary policy to measure these effects we assemble a new dataset of appointment announcements from 15 countries and conduct an event study analysis on exchange rates bond yields and stock prices our main findings are threefold first exchange rates and bond yields display a statistically significant response to the announcement of a new governor especially when the appointee s identity was not anticipated in advance second the reactions are especially pronounced for central banks lacking either independence or a clear nominal anchor third new governors are not generally perceived to lack credibility there is no tendency for announcements to be associated with jumps in inflation expectations

estimating central bank preferences under commitment and discretion this paper explains u s macroeconomic outcomes with an empirical new keynesian model in which monetary policy minimizes the central bank s loss function the presence of expectations in the model forms a well known distinction between two modes of optimization termed commitment and discretion the model is estimated separately under each policy using maximum likelihood over the volcker greenspan bernanke period comparisons of fit reveal that the data favor the specification with discretionary policy estimates of the loss function weights point to an excessive concern for interest rate smoothing in the commitment model but a more balanced concern relative to inflation and output stability in the discretionary model

optimal asset allocation with fixed term securities we investigate the optimal asset allocation of an investor who can invest in a fixed term security that is only traded at time 0 using a generalized martingale approach we solve the investor s optimal portfolio problem determine the optimal allocation to fixed term securities and provide a representation of trading strategies in terms of a liquidity related derivative we apply our approach to two benchmark scenarios fixed term fixed rate bank deposits and unspanned closed end securities that can only be traded at time 0 we show that both can be key parts of the investor s optimal asset mix and we investigate the dependence of optimal allocations to fixed term investments implied liquidity premia and other characteristics on the underlying model parameters

systemic illiquidity in the federal funds market this paper shows how the intra day allocation and pricing of overnight loans of federal funds reflect the decentralized inter bank market in which these loans are traded a wouldbe borrower or lender typically finds a counterparty institution by direct bilateral contact once in contact say by telephone the two counterparties to a potential trade negotiate terms that reflect their incentives for borrowing or lending as well as the attractiveness of their respective options to forego a trade and to continue shopping around this overthe counter otc pricing and allocation mechanism is quite distinct from that of most centralized markets such as an electronic limit order book market in which every order is anonymously exposed to every other order with a centralized order crossing algorithm while there is a significant body of research on the micro structure of specialist and limit order book markets most otc markets do not have comprehensive transactionslevel data available for analysis the federal funds market is a rare exception we go beyond a previous study by craig furfine 1999 of the microstructure of the federal funds market by modeling how the likelihood of matching a particular borrower with banking studies federal reserve bank of new york 33 liberty street new york ny 10045 we are grateful for support and data from the federal reserve bank of new york and for comments from guillaume plantin jamie mcandrews craig furfine michael fleming and anonymous federal funds traders we have also benefited from comments by andrew metrick jeremy stein ken french larry harris owen lamont john taylor and randy westerfield the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the federal reserve bank of new york or the federal reserve system

liquidity premia in dynamic bargaining markets abstract this paper develops a search theoretic model of the cross sectional distribution of asset returns abstracting from risk premia and focusing exclusively on liquidity in contrast with much of the transaction cost literature it is not assumed that different assets carry different exogenously specified trading costs instead different expected returns due to liquidity are explained by the cross sectional variation in tradeable shares the qualitative predictions of the model are consistent with much of the empirical evidence

revealing the preferences of the us federal reserve we use bayesian methods to estimate changes in us post war monetary policy in the smets and wouters model we perform the estimations by allowing for a break in monetary policy at the time of volcker s appointment as chairman this enables us to capture changes in the monetary policy regime introduced by volcker during the volcker greenspan period we find support for the assumption that monetary policy in the volcker greenspan period performed optimally under commitment our estimation strategy allows us to estimate the preferences of the us federal reserve in the volcker greenspan period where the main objective of policy appears to be inflation followed by interest rate stabilization output growth and interest rate smoothing we find that the great moderation of output growth is explained by a combination of two factors the decrease in the volatility of the structural shocks and the improved monetary policy conduct inflation stabilization however is mainly due to the change in monetary policy that took place at the beginning of volcker s mandate copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

does urgency affect price at market an analysis of u s treasury short term finance like all economic agents government must actively manage its cash position in order to meet obligations in the u s when the short term cash position is not adequate treasury offers bills that are not previously scheduled cash management bills using data from treasury s proprietary domestic finance database this paper finds unscheduled bills have consistently higher yields than normally scheduled bills suggesting the more inelastic demand represented by this type of finance has an impact on costs several factors are identified which contribute to the costs of cash management for treasury

tax induced clientele effects in the market for british government securities abstract this paper develops a new methods for measuring tax effects in bond markets and presents empirical results for british government securities the basic idea is to construct a least cost portfolio which for investors in a given tax bracket dominates a given bond a portfolio is said to dominate a bond if it provides cash flows which are at least as great in every period and has a lower price in effect our method calculates an upper bound on the value of a bond to investors in a given tax bracket the results demonstrate i the existence of clientele effects and ii the absence of an effective tax rate

the cost of short selling liquid securities standard models of liquidity argue that the higher price for a liquid security reflects the future benefits that long investors expect to receive we show that short sellers can also pay a net liquidity premium if their cost to borrow the security is higher than the price premium they collect from selling it we provide a model free decomposition of the price premium for liquid securities into the net premiums paid by both long investors and short sellers empirically we find that short sellers were responsible for a substantial fraction of the liquidity premium for on the run treasuries from november 1995 through july 2009

stochastic dominance and expected utility survey and analysis while stochastic dominance has been employed in various forms as early as 1932 it has only been since 1969 1970 that the notion has been developed and extensively employed in the area of economics finance agriculture statistics marketing and operations research in this survey the first second and third order stochastic dominance rules are discussed with an emphasis on the development in the area since the 1980s

primary versus secondary pricing of high yield bonds previous research has found systematic underpricing of newly floated securities vis a vis secondary market levels this conclusion is based on the observation that primary issues provide superior risk adjusted returns in the period immediately following issuance those returns however are not known at the time of pricing to gauge whether a new issue is offered at a premium or a concession to the secondary market investors must use standard valuation benchmarks in the case of high yield bonds an analysis based on agency ratings and yields to maturity indicates that new issues are priced richer than seasoned issues in some periods and cheaper in other periods using regression analysis the authors model the magnitude of the premium or concession prevailing in a given period the regressions explain 64 percent of the variance in the primary secondary yield spread through proxies for supply demand and liquidity of the high yield sector

the over the counter theory of the fed funds market a primer we present a dynamic over the counter model of the fed funds market and use it to study the determination of the fed funds rate the volume of loans traded and the intraday evolution of the distribution of reserve balances across banks we also investigate the implications of changes in the market structure as well as the effects of central bank policy instruments such as open market operations the discount window lending rate and the interest rate on bank reserves

figuring out the fed beliefs about policymakers and gains from transparency in this paper i use a markov chain monte carlo algorithm to estimate a model of private sector behavior that does not feature private sector knowledge of the monetary policymaking process and instead leaves firms and households uncertain about how monetary policy is set the private sector entertains two competing views of monetary policymaking which i estimate firms and households use bayes law on a rolling data sample to distinguish between those two models i use this setup to study the evolution of beliefs about the federal reserve and the possible gains from transparency

portfolio choice and pricing in illiquid markets abstract this paper studies portfolio choice and pricing in markets in which immediate trading may be impossible it departs from the literature by removing restrictions on asset holdings and finds that optimal positions depend significantly and naturally on liquidity when expected future liquidity is high agents take more extreme positions given that they do not have to hold those positions for long when they become undesirable consequently larger trades should be observed in markets with more frequent trading liquidity need not affect the price significantly however because liquidity has offsetting impacts on different agents demands this result highlights the importance of unrestricted portfolio choice the paper draws parallels with the transaction cost literature and clarifies the relationship between the price level and the realized trading frequency in this literature

estimating central banks preferences from a time varying empirical reaction function abstract we estimate monetary policy reaction functions for the united states the united kingdom and germany using a markov switching model that allows for shifts in the coefficients of the central bank s reaction function as well as for independent shifts in the residual variance the results indicate that central bank policy can be characterized as falling into a low and a high inflation regime over time all central banks have assigned changing weights to inflation and the output gap switching in the residual variance turns out to be important for the fit of the model as a reaction function is a reduced form coefficients embody preference parameters as well as parameters characterizing the structure of the economy to recover the central banks preferences we estimate the preference parameters jointly with a small model of the economy the results show that the bundesbank has placed a relatively higher weight on inflation than the fed moreover for the bundesbank and the fed the differences between both regimes seem to originate mainly from a changing preference for interest rate smoothing

trade dynamics in the market for federal funds we develop a model of the market for federal funds that explicitly accounts for its two distinctive features banks have to search for a suitable counterparty and once they have met both parties negotiate the size of the loan and the repayment the theory is used to answer a number of positive and normative questions what are the determinants of the fed funds rate how does the market reallocate funds is the market able to achieve an efficient reallocation of funds we also use the model for theoretical and quantitative analyses of policy issues facing modern central banks

how does liquidity affect government bond yields the paper explores the determinants of yield differentials between sovereign bonds using euro area data there is a common trend in yield differentials which is correlated with a measure of aggregate risk in contrast liquidity differentials display sizeable heterogeneity and no common factor we propose a simple model with endogenous liquidity demand where a bond s liquidity premium depends both on its transaction cost and on investment opportunities the model predicts that yield differentials should increase in both liquidity and risk with an interaction term of the opposite sign testing these predictions on daily data we find that the aggregate risk factor is consistently priced liquidity differentials are priced for a subset of countries and their interaction with the risk factor is in line with the model s prediction and crucial to detect their effect

uncovering the hit list for small inflation targeters a bayesian structural analysis we estimate underlying structural macroeconomic policy objectives of three of the earliest explicit inflation targeters within the context of a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model we assume central banks set policy optimally such that we can reverse engineer policy objectives from observed time series data joint tests of the posterior distributions of these policy preference parameters suggest that the central banks are very similar in their overall objective none of the central banks show a concern for stabilizing the real exchange rate all three central banks share a concern for minimizing the volatility in the change in the nominal interest rate we also show that the resulting optimal policy rule responds to exchange rate movements even in the case where the central banks do not explicitly care about exchange rate stabilization this result is also corroborated by results from an alternative simple rule characterization and estimation of central bank behavior these last two findings point to the pitfalls of making inferences from the level of ad hoc simple rules about what central banks may care about

liquidity taxes and short term treasury yields this article investigates differences in yields on identical treasury notes and bills and shows that they reflect differences in liquidity immediacy risk and taxes it proposes an empirical measure for differences in the liquidity risk of notes and bills the volatility ofthe underlying rate times the ratio of bills turnover to notes turnover because differential taxes affect sellers but not buyers of bills and notes the results reject free of informational problems the hypothesis that the notes demand curve is horizontal note bill yield differences also decrease with inventories of notes the less liquid asset

bond returns liquidity and missing data this paper examines holding period returns to constant duration portfolios of u s govern ment notes and bonds and measures the return premium generated by liquidity differences in bonds the approach compares constant duration portfolios constructed in two distinct ways one using only bonds issued in the most recent treasury auction one using all other bonds comparisons of the resulting series are made meaningful by choosing narrow du ration ranges in the portfolio formation procedure this in turn induces a missing data problem in the created time series parameters of return distributions are therefore estimated employing a maximum likelihood framework that explicitly accounts for the missing data it is estimated that recently issued bonds are priced to return a premium of around 55 basis points per annum over otherwise equivalent instruments

the decline in idiosyncratic values of us treasury securities abstract unique features and market frictions can lead to idiosyncratic pricing for some us treasury securities this study uses a linear programming lp model to measure aggregate idiosyncratic pricing of t notes and t bonds from 1980 to 2016 we document an average idiosyncratic pricing of 0 11 per 100 par as compared to an average bid ask spread of 0 08 further idiosyncratic pricing declined dramatically from the early 1980s to the 2010s empirical evidence suggests that the 1986 tax reform act increasing issue sizes and improving market liquidity contribute to the decline at the individual security level we identify factors contributing to and mitigating idiosyncratic pricing

does the liquidity of a debt issue increase with its size evidence from the corporate bond and medium term note markets to investigate the liquidity of large issues this study tests for yield differences between corporate bonds and medium term notes mtns in the sample mtns have an average issue size of 4 million compared with 265 million for bonds among mtns that have the same issuance date the same maturity date and the same corporate issuer we find no relation between size and yields moreover bonds and mtns have statistically equivalent yields thus rather than suggesting that large issues have greater liquidity these findings indicate that large and small securities issued by the same borrower are close substitutes the objective of this study is to test for a relation between the size of corporate debt offerings and their yields if investors value large offerings for their greater liquidity then large issues will have lower yields than small issues alternatively if investors view securities of the same borrower as close substitutes there may be no relation between issue size and yields to investigate whether issue size is a significant determinant of liquidity we test for yield differences between medium term notes mtns and bonds of the same corporate issuers in most respects mtns are similar to corporate bonds however mtns have an average issue size of around 5 million in contrast most offerings in the bond market raise at least 100 million thus if liquidity increases with issue size bonds will have lower yields than mtns and large mtns will have lower yields than small mtns the data we use consist of 4 182 mtns and 68 bonds offered by four large borrowers between october 1987 and december 1992 the issues in the sample range in size from 102 000 to 1 2 billion a disperse distribution that allows us to make reliable inferences about the relation between issue size and yields to test for a size effect within the mtn market we create subsamples of mtns that have the same issuance date the same maturity date and the same corporate issuer mtns in these subsamples are identical except for their yields and size on average yields on large mtns in the subsamples are 0 35 basis point higher than yields on small mtns a finding that is inconsistent with the liquidity hypothesis we also test for a yield difference between bonds

the on the run liquidity phenomenon abstract we test the implications of a model of multi asset speculative trading in which liquidity differentials between on the run and off the run u s treasury bonds ensue from endowment shocks in the presence of two realistic market frictions information heterogeneity and imperfect competition among informed traders and a public signal our evidence suggests that i off on the run liquidity differentials are economically and statistically significant even after controlling for several of the bonds intrinsic characteristics such as duration convexity repo rates or term premiums and ii off on the run liquidity differentials are smaller immediately following bond auction dates and larger when the uncertainty surrounding the ensuing auction allocations is high when the dispersion of beliefs across informed traders is high and when macroeconomic announcements are noisy consistent with our model

a new linear programming approach to bond portfolio management this paper derives and tests a new linear programming lp approach to bond portfolio management the model elicits possible tax clientele effects in the pricing of u s gov ernment coupon bonds and simultaneously derives the optimal tax specific bond portfolio analytically the model derives these results by exploiting for a given tax bracket the price differential of an after tax stream of cash flows it accomplishes this objective by purchasing at the ask price underprieed bonds for the specific tax bracket while sim ultaneously selling at the bid price overpriced bonds the model requires that the net cash flow inclusive of purchased and sold bonds be nonnegative at all future dates the problem s formulation standardizes the position taken in each bond to a maximum of one unit one of the model s appealing features is the parsimonious number of required calcu lations only one lp program need be run per tax bracket in addition to obtaining an optimally chosen tax specific bond portfolio the model also measures the after tax term structure of spot u s government interest rates for both tax exempt and taxable investors finally the superior monthly holding period rates of return on the optimal taxspecific bond portfolio demonstrate an important property ofthe model s output

eurosystem monetary targeting lessons from u s data abstract using a small empirical model of inflation output and money estimated on u s data we compare the relative performance of monetary targeting and inflation targeting the results show monetary targeting to be quite inefficient yielding both higher inflation and output variability this is true even with a nonstochastic money demand formulation our results are also robust to using a p model of inflation therefore in these popular frameworks there is no support for the prominent role given to money growth in the eurosystem s monetary policy strategy

the term structure of bond liquidity we analyze the impact of market frictions on the trading volume and liquidity premia of finite maturity assets when investors differ in their trading needs our equilibrium model generates a clientele effect frequently trading investors hold only short term assets and predicts i a hump shaped relation between trading volume and maturity ii lower trading volumes of older compared with younger assets iii an increasing liquidity term structure from ask prices iv a decreasing or u shaped liquidity term structure from bid prices and v spillovers of liquidity from short term to long term maturities empirical tests for u s corporate bonds support our theoretical predictions

liquidity and risk management this paper provides a model of the interaction between risk management practices and market liquidity on one hand tighter risk management reduces the maximum position an institution can take thus the amount of liquidity it can offer to the market on the other hand risk managers can take into account that lower liquidity amplifies the effective risk of a position by lengthening the time it takes to sell it the main result of the paper is that a feedback effect can arise tighter risk management reduces liquidity which in turn leads to tighter risk management etc this can help explain sudden drops in liquidity and since liquidity is priced in prices in connection with increased volatility or decreased risk bearing capacity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

portfolio choice with illiquid assets we present a model of optimal allocation to liquid and illiquid assets where illiquidity risk results from the restriction that an asset cannot be traded for intervals of uncertain duration illiquidity risk leads to increased and state dependent risk aversion and reduces the allocation to both liquid and illiquid risky assets uncertainty about the length of the illiquidity interval as opposed to a deterministic nontrading interval is a primary determinant of the cost of illiquidity we allow market liquidity to vary from normal periods when all assets are fully liquid to illiquidity crises when some assets can only be traded infrequently the possibility of a liquidity crisis leads to limited arbitrage in normal times investors are willing to forgo 2 of their wealth to hedge against illiquidity crises occurring once every 10 years this paper was accepted by itay goldstein finance

frictional intermediation in over the counter markets we extend duffie et al s 2005 search theoretic model of over the counter otc asset markets allowing for a decentralized inter dealer market with arbitrary heterogeneity in dealers valuations or equivalently inventory costs we develop a solution technique that makes the model fully tractable and allows us to derive in closed form theoretical formulas for key statistics analysed in empirical studies of the intermediation process in otc markets a calibration to the market for municipal bonds allows us to quantify important unobservable characteristics of this market including the severity of search and bargaining frictions and the nature of heterogeneity across dealers we use our calibrated model to study the effect of these market characteristics on total welfare and the distribution of gains from trade across customers and dealers

the dynamic properties of financial market equilibrium with trading fees we incorporate trading fees in a long horizon dynamic general equilibrium model in which traders optimally and endogenously decide when and how much to trade a full characterization of equilibrium is provided which allows us to study the dynamics of equilibrium trades equilibrium asset prices and rates of return in the presence of trading fees we exhibit the effect of trading fees on deviations from the consumption capm and analyze the pricing of endogenous liquidity risk we compare for the same shocks the impulse responses of this model to those of a model in which trading is infrequent because of trader inattention the current version reflects material that was previously in two papers w21421 and w19155

transaction costs and asset prices a dynamic equilibrium model in this article we study the effects of transaction costs on asset prices we assume an overlapping generations economy with a riskless liquid bond and many risky stocks carrying proportional transaction costs we obtain stock prices and turnover in closed form surprisingly a stock s price may increase in transaction costs and a more frequently traded stock may be less adversely affected by an increase in transaction costs calculations based on the marginal investor overestimate the effects of transaction costs for realistic parameter values transaction costs have very small effects on stock prices but large effects on turnover

leaning against the wind during financial disruptions market makers provide liquidity by absorbing external selling pressure they buy when the pressure is large accumulate inventories and sell when the pressure alleviates this paper studies optimal dynamic liquidity provision in a theoretical market setting with large and temporary selling pressure and order execution delays i show that competitive market makers offer the socially optimal amount of liquidity provided they have access to sufficient capital if raising capital is costly this suggests a policy role for lenient central bank lending during financial disruptions

default risk cannot explain the muni puzzle evidence from municipal bonds that are secured by u s treasury obligations fama 1977 and miller 1977 predict that one minus the corporate tax rate will equate after tax yields from comparable taxable and tax exempt bonds empirical evidence shows that long term tax exempt yields are higher than theory predicts two popular explanations for this empirical puzzle are that relative to taxable bonds municipal bonds bear more default risk and include costly call options i study u s government secured municipal bond yields which are effectively default free and nonmalleable these municipal yields display the same tendency to be too high i conclude that differential default risk and call options do not explain the municipal bond puzzle article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

stochastic dominance and expected utility while stochastic dominance has been employed in various forms as early as 1932 it has only been since 1969 1970 that the notion has been developed and extensively employed in the area of economics

spanish treasury bond market liquidity and volatility pre and post european monetary union abstract spain enacted a number of important debt management initiatives in 1997 to prepare its treasury bond market for european monetary union we interpret the impacts of these changes through shifts in a bond liquidity life cycle function furthermore we highlight the importance of expected average future liquidity in explaining spanish bond liquidity premiums we also uncover pricing biases that support the spanish treasury s tactical decision to target high coupon premium bonds in its pre emu debt exchanges finally we show that emu has been associated with both a decrease in bond yield volatility and an increase in pricing efficiency

stock and bond market liquidity a long run empirical analysis this paper establishes liquidity linkage between stock and treasury bond markets there is a lead lag relationship between illiquidity of the two markets and bidirectional granger causality the effect of stock illiquidity on bond illiquidity is consistent with flight toquality or flight to liquidity episodes monetary policy impacts illiquidity the evidence indicates that bond illiquidity acts as a channel through which monetary policy shocks are transferred into the stock market these effects are observed across illiquidity of bonds of different maturities and are especially pronounced for illiquidity of short term maturities the paper provides evidence of illiquidity integration between stock and bond markets

corporate bond market transaction costs and transparency using a complete record of u s over the counter otc secondary trades in corporate bonds we estimate average transaction costs as a function of trade size for each bond that traded more than nine times between january 2003 and january 2005 we find that transaction costs decrease significantly with trade size highly rated bonds recently issued bonds and bonds close to maturity have lower transaction costs than do other bonds costs are lower for bonds with transparent trade prices and they drop when the trace system starts to publicly disseminate their prices the results suggest that public traders benefit significantly from price transparency