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Gustavo Suarez

Bio: Gustavo Suarez is an academic researcher from Federal Reserve System. The author has contributed to research in topics: Interest rate & Leverage (finance). The author has an hindex of 19, co-authored 32 publications receiving 2409 citations.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, asset-backed commercial paper conduits, which experienced a shadow-banking run and played a central role in the early phase of the financial crisis of 2007-2009, were analyzed.

524 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors found that ex-ante risk taking by banks (measured by the risk rating of new loans) is negatively associated with increases in short-term interest rates, and this relationship is more pronounced in regions that are less in sync with the nationwide business cycle.
Abstract: We present evidence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy for the U.S. banking system. We use confidential data on banks' internal ratings on loans to businesses over the period 1997 to 2011 from the Federal Reserve's survey of terms of business lending. We find that ex-ante risk taking by banks (measured by the risk rating of new loans) is negatively associated with increases in short-term interest rates. This relationship is more pronounced in regions that are less in sync with the nationwide business cycle, and less pronounced for banks with relatively low capital or during periods of financial distress.

292 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze asset-backed commercial paper conduits, which experienced a shadow-banking "run" and played a central role in the early phase of the financial crisis of 2007-09.
Abstract: We analyze asset-backed commercial paper conduits, which experienced a shadow-banking “run” and played a central role in the early phase of the financial crisis of 2007-09. We document that commercial banks set up conduits to securitize assets worth $1.3 trillion while insuring the newly securitized assets using explicit guarantees. We show that regulatory arbitrage was the main motive behind setting up conduits: the guarantees were structured so as to reduce regulatory capital requirements, more so by banks with less capital, and while still providing recourse to bank balance sheets for outside investors. Consistent with such recourse, we find that conduits provided little risk transfer during the 'run': losses from conduits remained with banks rather than outside investors and banks with more exposure to conduits had lower stock returns.

274 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article found that one third of ABCP programs experienced a run within weeks of the onset of the crisis and that runs, as well as yields and maturities for new issues, were related to program-level and macro-financial risks.
Abstract: This paper documents “runs” on asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) programs in 2007. We find that one-third of programs experienced a run within weeks of the onset of the ABCP crisis and that runs, as well as yields and maturities for new issues, were related to program-level and macro-financial risks. These findings are consistent with the asymmetric information framework used to explain banking panics, have implications for commercial paper investors’ degree of risk intolerance, and inform empirical predictions of recent papers on dynamic coordination failures.

229 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors found that ex ante risk-taking by banks (measured by the risk rating of new loans) is negatively associated with increases in short-term interest rates, and this relationship is more pronounced in regions that are less in sync with the nationwide business cycle.
Abstract: We present evidence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy for the U.S. banking system. We use confidential data on banks’ internal ratings on loans to businesses over the period 1997 to 2011 from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Terms of Business Lending. We find that ex ante risk-taking by banks (measured by the risk rating of new loans) is negatively associated with increases in short-term interest rates. This relationship is more pronounced in regions that are less in sync with the nationwide business cycle, and less pronounced for banks with relatively low capital or during periods of financial distress.

212 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The financial market turmoil in 2007 and 2008 has led to the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and threatens to have large repercussions on the real economy as mentioned in this paper The bursting of the housing bubble forced banks to write down several hundred billion dollars in bad loans caused by mortgage delinquencies at the same time the stock market capitalization of the major banks declined by more than twice as much.
Abstract: The financial market turmoil in 2007 and 2008 has led to the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and threatens to have large repercussions on the real economy The bursting of the housing bubble forced banks to write down several hundred billion dollars in bad loans caused by mortgage delinquencies At the same time, the stock market capitalization of the major banks declined by more than twice as much While the overall mortgage losses are large on an absolute scale, they are still relatively modest compared to the $8 trillion of US stock market wealth lost between October 2007, when the stock market reached an all-time high, and October 2008 This paper attempts to explain the economic mechanisms that caused losses in the mortgage market to amplify into such large dislocations and turmoil in the financial markets, and describes common economic threads that explain the plethora of market declines, liquidity dry-ups, defaults, and bailouts that occurred after the crisis broke in summer 2007 To understand these threads, it is useful to recall some key factors leading up to the housing bubble The US economy was experiencing a low interest rate environment, both because of large capital inflows from abroad, especially from Asian countries, and because the Federal Reserve had adopted a lax interest rate policy Asian countries bought US securities both to peg the exchange rates at an export-friendly level and to hedge against a depreciation of their own currencies against the dollar, a lesson learned from the Southeast Asian crisis of the late 1990s The Federal Reserve Bank feared a deflationary period after the bursting of the Internet bubble and thus did not counteract the buildup of the housing bubble At the same time, the banking system underwent an important transformation The

2,434 citations

ReportDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the global financial cycle is not aligned with countries' specific macroeconomic conditions and propose a convex combination of targeted capital control, macroprudential control, and stricter limit on leverage for all financial intermediaries.
Abstract: There is a global financial cycle in capital flows, asset prices and in credit growth. This cycle co‐moves with the VIX, a measure of uncertainty and risk aversion of the markets. Asset markets in countries with more credit inflows are more sensitive to the global cycle. The global financial cycle is not aligned with countries’ specific macroeconomic conditions. Symp toms can go from benign to large asset price bubbles and excess credit creation, which are among the best predictors of financial crises. A VAR analysis suggests that one of the determinants of the global financial cycle is monetary policy in the centre country , which affects leverage of global banks, capital flows and credit growth in the international financial system. Whenever capital is freely mobile, the global financial cycle constrains national monetary policies regardless of the exchange rate regime. For the past few decades, international macroeconomics has postulated the “trilemma”: with free capital mobility, inde pendent monetary policies are feasible if and only if exchange rates are floating. The global financial cycle transforms the trilemma into a “dilemma” or an “irreconcilable duo”: independent monetary policies are possible if and only if the capital account is managed. So should policy restrict capital mobility? Gains to international capital flows have proved elusive whether in calibrated models or in the data. Large gross flows disrupt asset markets and financial intermediation, so the costs may be very large. To deal with the global financial cycle and the “dilemma”, we have the following policy options: ( a) targeted capital controls; (b) acting on one of the sources of the financial cyc le itself, the monetary policy of the Fed and other main central banks; (c) acting on the transmission channel cyclically by limiting credit growth and leverage during the upturn of the cycle, using national macroprudential policies; (d) acting on the transmission channel structurally by imposing stricter limit s on leverage for all financial intermediaries. We argue for a convex combination of (a), (c) and (d).

1,428 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that insufficient attention has so far been paid to the link between monetary policy and the perception and pricing of risk by economic agents - what might be termed the "risk-taking channel" of monetary policy.
Abstract: Few areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper, taking as a starting point a brief overview of the extant work on the interaction between capital regulation, the business cycle and the transmission mechanism, we offer some broader reflections on the characteristics of the transmission mechanism in light of the evolution of the financial system. We argue that insufficient attention has so far been paid to the link between monetary policy and the perception and pricing of risk by economic agents - what might be termed the "risk-taking channel" of monetary policy. We develop the concept, compare it with current views of the transmission mechanism, explore its mutually reinforcing link with "liquidity" and analyse its interaction with monetary policy reaction functions. We argue that changes in the financial system and prudential regulation may have increased the importance of the risk-taking channel and that prevailing macroeconomic paradigms and associated models are not well suited to capturing it, thereby also reducing their effectiveness as guides to monetary policy.

1,365 citations

01 Feb 1951
TL;DR: The Board of Governors' Semiannual Agenda of Regulations for the period August 1, 1980 through February 1, 1981 as discussed by the authors provides information on those regulatory matters that the Board now has under consideration or anticipates considering over the next six months.
Abstract: Enclosed is a copy of the Board of Governors’ Semiannual Agenda of Regulations for the period August 1, 1980 through February 1, 1981. The Semiannual Agenda provides you with information on those regulatory matters that the Board now has under consideration or anticipates considering over the next six months, and is divided into three parts: (1) regulatory matters that the Board had considered during the previous six months on which final action has been taken; (2) regulatory matters that have been proposed for public comment and that require further Board consideration; and (3) regulatory matters that the Board may consider over the next six months.

1,236 citations