Economics Commons^™

Lessons Learned: Christopher Spoth, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

As senior deputy director of the Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Spoth led examinations, enforcement actions, problem bank remediations, and failure resolutions, among a range of responsibilities. During the Global Financial Crisis, he was on the front lines of fast-moving policy discussions and actions to help stabilize the financial system, and he oversaw the closure and restructuring of some of the nation’s largest banks. This abstract is based on an interview with Spoth on February 4, 2021.

Lessons Learned: Kevin Warsh, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

As senior deputy director of the Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Spoth led examinations, enforcement actions, problem bank remediations, and failure resolutions, among a range of responsibilities. During the Global Financial Crisis, he was on the front lines of fast-moving policy discussions and actions to help stabilize the financial system, and he oversaw the closure and restructuring of some of the nation’s largest banks. This abstract is based on an interview with Spoth on February 4, 2021.

Lessons Learned: Brian Sack, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

Charged with overseeing the implementation of the asset-purchase programs and liquidity facilities in his roles as executive vice president of the Markets Group and manager of the System Open Market Account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), Brian Sack played a critical role in keeping markets functioning during the years 2009–2012. He served as an adviser to top policymakers, and, in addition to implementing the various programs designed to stabilize financial conditions, he monitored their impact and measured their performance. This Lessons Learned summary is based on an interview with Sack on November 13, 2020.

Lessons Learned: Nathan Sheets, Yasemin Sim Esmen, Rosalind Z. Wiggins

Journal of Financial Crises

Between 2007 and 2011, Nathan Sheets was director of the Division of International Finance at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He oversaw the operations of the division and advised the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on economic and financial developments in foreign countries. Sheets also regularly represented the Federal Reserve Board at international meetings and in its contacts with foreign central banks. Under his helm, the division was involved in helping establish and manage the US dollar liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks. This Lessons Learned abstract is based on an interview with Sheets on …

Lessons Learned: Susan Mclaughlin, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

A veteran staff member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), Susan McLaughlin served as head of the discount window and chief operating officer of the FRBNY’s Markets Trading Desk during the Global Financial Crisis. She was centrally involved in the Fed’s policy response to the disruptions to secured and unsecured funding markets during 2007–2008. Following the crisis, McLaughlin coordinated an effective Fed initiative to reform the triparty repurchase agreement (repo) market’s settlement infrastructure. The Fed’s reform efforts, engaging the financial industry under FRBNY president Bill Dudley, were instrumental in im-proving the stability of the funding market. This …

Lessons Learned: Frederic Mishkin, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

Rick Mishkin served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 to 2008 and as director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1994 to 1997. A leading expert on monetary economics and financial markets and a professor at Columbia University’s School of Business since 1983, Mishkin has written 20 books, including the textbook The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets. This Lessons Learned is based on an interview with Mishkin conducted on October 20, 2020.

Lessons Learned: Simon Potter, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Simon Potter, an economist, worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for more than two decades. Leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, he was the New York Fed’s associate director of economic research; in 2010, he became director. In 2012, he shifted to become the head of the markets group, putting him at the helm of the Fed’s open markets operations, the mechanism by which the central bank steers monetary policy and interest rates. He moved to the private sector in 2019. For this April 2021 Lessons Learned interview, he emphasized that these are his personal opinions, …

Lessons Learned: Steven B. Kamin, Yasemin Sim Esmen

Journal of Financial Crises

Steven B. Kamin was the deputy director of the division of international finance at the Federal Reserve Board during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and was appointed director in 2011. He was responsible for research, policy analysis, and reporting in the areas of foreign economic activity, US external trade and capital flows, and developments in international financial markets and institutions. This Lessons Learned is based on an interview conducted with Kamin on August 16, 2019.

Lessons Learned: Kieran J. Fallon, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

Presently the senior deputy general counsel for regulation and government affairs at PNC Fi-nancial Services Group, Kieran Fallon completed a 16-year tenure in the legal division of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2011. As associate general counsel dur-ing the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), he helped design the Federal Reserve’s Commercial Pa-per Funding Facility, restructure American International Group (AIG), and implement the Dodd-Frank Act. Relatedly, Fallon also served as general counsel for the Financial Stability Oversight Board from 2008 to 2011. This Lessons Learned is based on an interview conducted with Fallon on August 13, 2020.

Lessons Learned: Seth Carpenter, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Seth Carpenter was a senior staff member of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board during the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), meaning he was part of the team that advised the Board of Governors and members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in setting monetary policy. He led the Board team that worked daily with the Open Market Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to implement policy. He left the Federal Reserve System as deputy director of monetary affairs in 2014 to work at the US Department of the Treasury, where …

Lessons Learned: Tim Clark, Lynnley Browning

Journal of Financial Crises

During the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09, Tim Clark was senior adviser in the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Clark was a chief architect of the Federal Reserve’s capital and liquidity stress tests that helped to stabilize the banks. He was also one of the leaders behind the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act and other reforms at the Federal Reserve, and ultimately served as deputy director of the Division for Supervision and Regulation. This abstract is based on an interview with Clark that occurred on December 13, 2019.

The Internal Capital Markets Of Global Dealer Banks, Arun Gupta

Journal of Financial Crises

This study uncovers the existence of a trillion-dollar internal capital market that played a central role in the financing of dealer banks during the 2007–09 Global Financial Crisis. Hand-collecting a novel set of dealer microdata at the subsidiary level, I present a unique set of facts on the evolution of inter-affiliate loans between US primary dealers and their (primarily foreign) siblings. First, the aggregate size of these dealer internal capital markets quadrupled from $335 billion in 2001 to $1.2 trillion by 2007. Second, 25 percent of total repurchase agreements and 62 percent of total securities lending reported on US primary …

Lessons Learned: John Bovenzi, Sandra Ward

Journal of Financial Crises

As a deputy to the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and in his role as chief operating officer of the agency, John Bovenzi provided policy advice and oversaw the agency’s operations, including business lines, bank supervision, bank closings, deposit insurance, and administrative affairs. Bovenzi’s most notable role during the Global Financial Crisis was manning the helm of mortgage lender IndyMac after the FDIC took it over in July 2008 to position it for a sale. This abstract is based on an interview with Bovenzi conducted on December 2, 2020

Managing External Volatility: Policy Frameworks In Non-Reserve-Issuing Economies, Hélène Poirson, Nathan Porter, Ghada Fayad, Itai Agur, Ran Bi, Jiaqian Chen, Johannes Eugster, Stefan Laseen, Jeta Menkulasi, Kenji Moriyama, Céline Rochon, Katsiaryna Svirydzenka, Camilo Tovar, Zhongxia Zhang, Aleksandra Zdzienicka

Journal of Financial Crises

Since the Global Financial Crisis, non-reserve-issuing economies (NREs) have been highly sensitive to episodes of external pressures. With monetary policy independence constrained by this sensitivity, many NREs have utilized other policy instruments. This paper confirms the vulnerability of NREs to external shocks and finds that, in some circumstances, managing such shocks with multiple instruments can both lessen the policy response required from any one policy tool to financial and external shocks and increase the effectiveness of policies in stabilizing macrofinancial conditions. Effectiveness, however, does not always imply appropriateness, which rests on an evaluation of potential trade-offs and unintended consequences.

From Lost Turnover To Nonperforming Loans: The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On The Economy And On The Financial System, Antonio Sánchez Serrano

Journal of Financial Crises

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented economic shock across the world. As a result of the coronavirus outbreak and the related health measures, nonfinancial corporations providing nonessential goods or services that cannot be consumed remotely have experienced a large decrease in their turnover. Using balance sheets and flows statements, we are able to quantify the impact of the pandemic on nonfinancial corporations and households, according to several scenarios for the pandemic over 2021. The impact is largely heterogeneous across sectors and amounts to up to 20% of the turnover for euro area nonfinancial corporations. Stress in these corporations and households …

Financial Crises And Legislation, Peter Conti-Brown, Michael Ohlrogge

Journal of Financial Crises

Scholars frequently assert that financial legislation in the United States is primarily crisis driven. This “crisis-legislation hypothesis” is often cited as an explanation for various supposed shortcomings of US financial legislation, including that it is poorly conceived and inadequate to the problems it aims to address. Other scholars embrace the hypothesis, but from the perspective that crises are the needed impetus to prompt constructive reforms. Despite the prevalence of this hypothesis, however, its threshold assumption—that Congress passes major financial legislation only when financial crises arise—has never been analyzed empirically. This article provides that analysis. We first devise a new system …

Free Market: The History Of An Idea. By Jacob Soll. Basic Books, 2022. 326 Pp, Index. $32., James K. Galbraith

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Review of Free Market: The History of an Idea. Jacob Soll. New York, Basic Books, 2022. 326 pp.

The Dynamics Of Monthly Changes In Us Swap Yields: A Keynesian Perspective, Tanweer Akram, Khawaja Mamun

WCBT Working Papers

John Maynard Keynes (1930) asserted that the central bank sways the long-term interest rate through the influence of its policy rate on the short-term interest rate. Recent empirical research shows that Keynes's conjecture holds for long-term Treasury yields in the United States. This paper investigates whether Keynes's conjecture also holds for the monthly changes in US long-term swap yields by econometrically modeling its dynamics using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The econometric modeling reveals that there is statistically significant effect on the monthly changes in the Treasury bill rate on the monthly changes in swap yields of different maturity …

Essays On Futures Market And Machine Learning, Jonathan J. Lopez Camara

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1 - Big Data And Machine Learning To Predict Overnight Interest Rates. This paper is a brief introduction to the two main pieces I have elaborated as part of the dissertation. Here, I explain the reasons why I have done my research about predicting the overnight interest rates for Mexico and the United States using big data and machine learning models. I explain the connection between the two research papers, I define some basic concepts such as future contracts and the overnight funding rate for Mexico. There is a summary about the data I use, and the machine learning …

Essays On Inequality, Growth, And Economic Policy, Philipp E. Erfurth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study inequality and regional economics in a historical and development context.

The first chapter examines regional inequality among Habsburg regions from the 19th century to today’s EU by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to recreate historical regions in present-day projections. The findings suggests that regional disparities are markedly higher today than in the 19th century, despite rapid convergence in the past two decades. The study thus provides evidence of retrospective determinism in the study of the Habsburg economy and suggests that, although regional EU policy has been successful over the past two …

Essays On Spillover Effects Across U.S And China, Zhuo Xi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter1: With the rapid development and continuous advancement of economic globalization, the links between countries around the world have become increasingly tight. Among them, the United States, as the world's largest economy, its monetary policy is bound to cause significant spillover effects on other economies around the world. By constructing a Threshold SVAR model with monthly data from 1996 to 2019, this paper empirically investigates the spillover effects of US monetary policy on China's economy during different U.S policy regimes. The transmission mechanism of such effects has been tested through different channels including policy channel, trade channel, asset value channel …

Essays On Housing And Macroeconomics, Pablo Lara Hinojos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: House Prices and Aggregate Markups: A VAR Approach

Based on the empirical results of Stroebel and Vavra (2019), who find that a local increase in house prices translates into higher local retail markups and prices, I investigate whether this relationship holds at the aggregate level. I first construct a quarterly aggregate markup series and find that house prices and aggregate markups have a positive relationship. This result emerges from a Vector Autoregression (VAR) system that includes the nominal interest rate, the inflation rate, aggregate house prices, aggregate markups, and real output. I use the Impulse Response Functions (IRFs) …

Essays In Asset Pricing, Muhammed Yonac

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays in asset pricing with the common theme of return predictability.

Chapter 1: This chapter introduces the motivation, results, and structure of the dissertation.

Chapter 2: I examine the relation between the social ties between firms' headquarters locations and co-movements between their fundamentals and stock returns. The evidence indicates that firms in the same industry with socially connected locations exhibit co-movement in fundamentals and stock returns that exceed those without socially connected locations. However, the stock returns reflect the location information with a lag. To exploit this lagged relationship, we form portfolios that buy (sell) …

Macroeconomic Adjustments Of Global Convergence: Real Exchange Rate Response Of Asia-Pacific Growth, Kumarappan Annamalai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1 : PURCHASING POWER PARITY, REAL EXCHANGE RATE, PRICE LEVEL INDEX and HARROD-BALASSA-SAMUELSON EFFECT: LITERATURE SURVEY

In the light of the concepts explained in the introduction section, this chapter explores the seminal papers on the Purchasing Power Parity principle, the Real Exchange rate, and the Price Level Index, showing the evolution of PPP and the methodologies adopted in exploring the characteristics of PPP and the real exchange rates. Various characteristics might be stationarity or non-stationarity of the real exchange rates (RER), variance, correlation, half-life measures, linearity versus non-linearity, etc. Various methodologies adopted were …

Stereotypic Beliefs Contribute To Gender Disparities In The Field Of Economics, Stefanie Simon, Crystal L. Hoyt, Stephanie Fattorusso

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Why are women under-represented in the field of economics relative to men? We propose that stereotypes associated with economists contribute to women’s interest in the field. We test the predictions that economists are stereotypically associated with low levels of communion and high levels of agency and that this type of stereotype content is associated with women’s lower interest in the field. In Study 1 (N = 883), stereotypes associated with people in the field of economics were masculine, characterized with low levels of communion and high levels of agency. In Study 2 (N = 182), undergraduate women were …

The Exchange Rate System Reform In China: Some Important Results, Paul S. L. Yip, Yiu Kuen Tse, Yingjie Dong

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide a review and empirical study on the exchange rate system reform in China. In the initial stage of the reform the Chinese central bank PBoC's implicit promise of gradual appreciation helped to contain the appreciation rate and volatility of the renminbi. Subsequently, under US pressure for faster appreciation and hence the PBoC's moderate violation of the implicit promise, there was a significant rise in the appreciation rate and the volatility of the renminbi. The moderate violation deteriorated further, forming a vicious cycle of speculative flows and faster exchange rate changes. Upon the onset of the global financial crisis …

Three Essays On Consumption Smoothing, Logan James Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Macroeconomic theory has established that consumption smoothing leads to higher standards of living. A stable consumption path can lead to more stability and less uncertainty between periods of high and low income. However, there is a wide body of literature that shows people do not consistently smooth their consumption when exposed to adverse income shocks. This dissertation uses experimental and empirical methods to better understand the obstacles people face when trying to smooth their consumption over time. It looks to understand the differences in pairs and individuals’ ability to smooth consumption. It also explores how the household’s level of income …

Lessons Learned: Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

Zeti Akhtar Aziz, a Malaysian economist, was governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, her nation’s central bank, from 2000 to 2016; prior to that, she was acting governor and deputy governor. Dr. Zeti was a key leader in Malaysia’s response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997¬-98, as well as the financial sector restructuring that followed. This “Lessons Learned” summary is based on a 2022 interview with Dr. Zeti. At the time of the interview, she was co-chair of the board of governors of the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur, which is a partnership between Bank Negara and the …

Lessons Learned: David Wilcox, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

David Wilcox was the deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-¬09. He assisted in developing the Federal Reserve policy response that ultimately stabilized the economy by providing insight into the economic and financial outlook to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) prior to each of its policy-setting meetings. Wilcox became director of the division in 2011 and served in that role through 2018, acting as the division’s chief economist, manager, and the senior adviser to three Fed chairs. After leaving the Fed, he joined …

Lessons Learned: Mark Van Der Weide, Matthew A. Lieber

Journal of Financial Crises

With more than two decades of continuing service at the Federal Reserve Board, Mark Van Der Weide brings a unique insider perspective on central bank policymaking before, during, and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), including the Fed’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. From 1998 to 2009, Van Der Weide served in the Fed’s legal division. De-tailed to the Treasury Department in 2009, he helped draft the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Re-form and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Back at the Fed in 2010, Van Der Weide served for eight years in the Division of Supervision and Regulation, where …