Central banks

From purchases to exit: central bank interventions in corporate debt markets

05/13/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

Central banks increasingly act as market-makers-of-last-resort, yet the impact and exit of such interventions remain poorly understood. Using euro-area data, we analyze the cycle of market freeze, intervention, and exit in short-term debt markets. A run on money market funds (MMFs) triggered a collapse in these markets in March 2020. Firms replaced only 27% of lost funding through credit lines. The European Central Bank intervened, fully replacing MMFs for some firms and allowing them to issue more debt at lower rates and longer maturities.

Exchange of letters between the Governor and the Chancellor on the Asset Purchase Facility - May 2025

05/13/2025 Bank of England Central banks

Exchange of letters between the Governor and the Chancellor

IFDP Paper: Related Exposures to Distressed Borrowers and Bank Lending(Revised)

05/12/2025 Federal Reserve Central banks

Sumit Agarwal, Ricardo Correa, Bernardo Morais, Jessica Roldán and Claudia Ruiz-OrtegaWe study how banks’ exposure to a large set of related and suddenly-distressed borrowers impacts their commercial lending and risk taking. Using Mexican credit registry data, we examine the effect of the 2014 collapse in energy prices.

Rational inattention during an RCT

05/12/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

We introduce an information provision experiment into a standard dynamic rational inattention model. We derive analytical results about how the treatment effect varies with characteristics of the environment and the individual. We use these results to discuss findings in the empirical literature on information provision experiments that can be explained by rational inattention of survey respondents and what this interpretation implies about behavior outside the survey.

IFDP Paper: Measuring Shortages since 1900

05/09/2025 Federal Reserve Central banks

Dario Caldara, Matteo Iacoviello, and David YuThis paper introduces a monthly shortage index spanning 1900 to the present, constructed from 25 million newspaper articles. The index captures shortages across industry, labor, food, and energy, and spikes during economic crises and wars. We validate the index and show that it provides information beyond traditional macroeconomic indicators.

FEDS Paper: Cost of Banking for LMI and Minority Communities(Revised)

05/09/2025 Federal Reserve Central banks

Marco Migueis, Michael Suher, and Jessie XuWe test whether minimum account balances to avoid fees, maintenance fee amounts, and nonsufficient funds charges are systematically different in LMI and majority-minority communities relative to other communities and find that they are generally higher.

FEDS Paper: Refining the Definition of the Unbanked

05/09/2025 Federal Reserve Central banks

Elena Falcettoni and Vegard Mokleiv NygaardWe propose a new way to classify individuals without a bank account, accounting for their actual interest in being banked. Analogous to how unemployment statistics are defined and estimated, we differentiate the individuals that do not have a bank account and would like to have one (the “unbanked”) from individuals that do not have a bank account and are not interested in having one (the “out of banking population”).

IFDP Paper: Optimal Credit Market Policy

05/09/2025 Federal Reserve Central banks

Matteo Iacoviello, Ricardo Nunes, and Andrea PrestipinoWe study optimal credit market policy in a stochastic, quantitative, general equilibrium, infinite-horizon economy with collateral constraints tied to housing prices. Collateral constraints yield a competitive equilibrium that is Pareto inefficient. Taxing housing in good states and subsidizing it in recessions leads to a Pareto-improving allocation for borrowers and savers.

Bank Rate reduced to 4.25% - May 2025

05/08/2025 Bank of England Central banks

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is responsible for making decisions about Bank Rate.

Bank lending rates and the riskiness of euro area household loans

05/08/2025 European Central Bank Central banks

I assess the impact of the recent hike in bank lending rates on euro area retail borrowers using a novel microsimulation framework that updates household-level data of a recent representative survey with up-to-date macro-financial information. The key novelty is that existing mortgages are gradually repaid, and new ones are extended, a feature necessary for medium-term simulations in a period of sizable credit growth. Since lending rates have increased, debt servicing has become more demanding, and the simulated share of distressed loans has increased.

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