Viktors StebunovsA cornerstone of the law-and-finance literature is that stronger institutions reduce financial intermediation costs. Using global data on cross-border payment costs, I show this relationship can reverse in heavily regulated sectors. Anti-money laundering risks have larger cost effects in advanced economies with strong enforcement than in developing countries with weak enforcement, despite the former having lower underlying risks.
Vitaly M. Bord, Agnes Kovacs, and Patrick MoranIn the United States, credit card companies frequently use machine learning algorithms to proactively raise credit limits for borrowers. In contrast, an increasing number of countries have begun to prohibit credit limit increases initiated by banks rather than consumers.
Daniel O. Beltran and Julio L. OrtizWe explore differences in the dynamics of core inflation between Europe and North America using a Bayesian time series filter that decomposes the level of core inflation in the major advanced economies into regional, global, and country-specific components. We find a prominent role for both regional and global factors. Historically, the two regional components have at times diverged.
Manuel González-Astudillo, Diego VilánA challenge for conducting monetary policy in a currency union is the diverse economic conditions among member states. Such disparities can drive natural interest rates apart, thereby undermining the stabilizing role of a unified monetary policy.
Robert M. Adams and Shane M. SherlundThis study examines changes in household and employment access to bank branches in the United States from 2014 to 2024, calculating distances with highly granular census block-level data. We develop a continuous measure of bank branch access that accounts for population and employment density, implicitly accounting for varying travel times within different urban and rural areas.
Jacob OrchardThis paper shows that adverse macroeconomic shocks systematically increase inflation for low-income households relative to high-income households. I document two key facts: (i) during every U.S. recession since 1959, aggregate spending shifts toward products disproportionately purchased by low-income households (necessities); and (ii) relative prices of necessities rise during recessions.
Jaemin Jeong, Eunseong Ma, Choongryul YangWhen do households listen to the Fed? We show the answer lies in a simple but powerful force: household attention to macroeconomic conditions. We develop a model where attention acts as a crucial gatekeeper for the pass-through of policy news to beliefs, and confirm its predictions using household survey data.
Daniel A. Dias; Sophia C. ScottThis paper shows that U.S. commercial banks' funding betas rise predictably with the length, magnitude, and direction of each monetary policy cycle: longer cycles and those with larger changes in the policy rate yield stronger pass-through in both tightening and loosening cycles, with modest asymmetry favoring slightly greater transmission during loosening cycles. Nondeposit liabilities consistently adjust more than deposits.
Shengwu Du, Travis D. Nesmith, Yang HeppeFinancial stress can impact trading behavior in the U.S. commodity futures markets. To clarify the impact, we study absolute changes and relative exposure dynamics in traders' positions during two recent crises: the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of these two crises are very distinct, and we find that traders behaved quite differently.
David M. Arseneau and Gazi I. KaraThis paper uses a large-scale redrawing of flood zone maps for the City of New Orleans in 2016 to identify how banks respond to changes in perceived flood risk in residential mortgage origination. Using geo-coding, we separate loan-level data on mortgage originations into treatment versus control groups based on how individual properties were affected by the map changes.
