Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

About: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is a other organization based out in St Louis, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 203 authors who have published 1650 publications receiving 46084 citations.

Gauging Market Responses to Monetary Policy Communication

Abstract: The modern model of central bank communication suggests that central bankers prefer to err on the side of saying too much rather than too little. The reason is that most central bankers believe that clear and concise communication of monetary policy helps achieve their goals. For the Federal Reserve, this means to achieve its goals of price stability, maximum employment, and stable long-term interest rates. This article examines the various dimensions of Fed communication with the public and financial markets and how Fed communication with the public has evolved over time. We use daily and intraday data to document how Fed communication affects key financial market variables. We find that Fed communication is associated with changes in prices of financial market instruments such as Treasury securities and equity prices. However, this effect varies by type of communication, by type of instrument, and by who is doing the speaking.

Identifying the Effects of Central Bank Intervention

Abstract: Most intervention studies have been silent on the assumed structure of the economic system - implicitly imposing implausible assumptions - despite the fact that inference depends crucially on such issues. This paper proposes to identify the cross-effects of intervention with the level and volatility of exchange rates using the likely timing of intervention, macroeconomic announcements as instruments and the nonlinear structure of the intervention reaction function. Proper identification of the effects of intervention indicates that it is moderately effective in changing the levels of exchange rates but has no significant effect on volatility. The paper also illustrates that such inference depends on paying careful attention to seemingly innocuous identification assumptions.

Assessing Credit Risk in Money Market Funds During the Eurozone Crisis

Abstract: This paper measures credit risk in prime money market funds (MMFs) and studies how such credit risk evolved during the eurozone crisis of 2011-2012. To accomplish this, we estimate the annualized expected loss on each fund’s portfolio. We also calculate by Monte Carlo the cost of insuring a fund against losses amounting to over 50 basis points. We find that credit risk of prime MMFs, though small, doubled from 12 basis points in June 2011 to 23 basis points in December 2011 before receding in 2012. Contrary to common perceptions, this did not primarily reflect funds’ credit exposure to eurozone banks because funds took measures to reduce this exposure. Instead, credit risk in prime MMFs rose because of the deteriorating credit outlook of banks in the Asia/Pacific region. We conclude that the increase in the credit risk of prime MMFs in the second half of 2011 reflected contagion in the worldwide banking system coupled with slowing global economic growth, not actions taken by MMFs.

Seigniorage and Sovereign Default: The Response of Emerging Markets to COVID-19

Abstract: This paper incorporates fiscal and monetary policies into a model of sovereign default. In addition to the standard present-bias vs default-risk tradeoff faced by governments when choosing debt, distortionary policy instruments introduce an intertemporal tradeoff, which may mitigate or exacerbate the incentives to accumulate debt. Taxation, the money growth rate and currency depreciation all increase with the level of debt. The model reproduces standard business cycle statistics, the response of spreads, inflation and growth to terms-of-trade shocks, and the cyclical properties of fiscal and monetary policies in emerging markets. A counterfactual exercise for Argentina in 2005-2017 suggests that government expansion accounted for the rise in taxes, inflation and currency depreciation and kept output growth low, countering the benign effects of favorable terms of trade.

Chinese Foreign Exchange Reserves, Policy Choices, and the U.S. Economy

Abstract: China is both a major trading partner of the United States and the largest official holder of U.S. assets in the world. The value of Chinese foreign exchange reserves peaked at just over $4 trillion in June 2014 but has since declined to $3.19 trillion (as of August 2016). This very large decline in foreign exchange reserves is unprecedented, and some analysts have speculated that continued sales of these (mostly U.S.) assets might significantly impact the U.S. and global economies. This article explains the reasons for this large decline in official assets, China’s available policy choices, and how these choices could affect the U.S. economy.