Working Papers

How flexible are corporate loans after origination? Theory predicts coordination problems should make syndicated loans harder to modify than single-bank loans. We show the opposite. Using comprehensive regulatory data, we document that syndicated loans are modified frequently and respond to borrower distress, while single-lender loans are half as likely to be modified. This gap is not explained by covenants or performance pricing. Instead, syndicated loans are monitored more intensively. We show theoretically and empirically how fixed monitoring costs generate scale economies: larger loans justify continuous monitoring enabling flexible renegotiation, while smaller borrowers receive arm's-length contracts with limited scope for modifications.

The Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) was an emergency liquidity facility set up by the Federal Reserve in March 2023 following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank which experienced a classic bank run driven by weak fundamentals. This paper provides an in-depth discussion of the design and implementation of the BTFP and presents some evidence on program outcomes. It also quantifies how the lending terms compare to those of the Discount Window—the Federal Reserve's main standing liquidity facility. The BTFP successfully acted as a backstop source of funding for depository institutions with large unrealized securities losses and heavy reliance on uninsured deposits and, in doing so, helped to avert a potential systemic banking crisis. The program ceased issuing new loans in March 2024 and closed one year later as the last loans matured. All outstanding loan balances were repaid in full.

We use high-frequency data to examine the effectiveness of the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) in supporting the liquidity positions of vulnerable banks during the March 2023 banking turmoil. We uncover three key findings. First, our high-frequency data confirm that banks with high reliance on uninsured deposits and large unrealized losses on securities holdings suffered larger deposit outflows at the onset of the episode. Second, the BTFP played an outsized role in meeting these outflows at banks with larger securities losses, reflecting the at-par valuation of securities collateral at the BTFP (banks at the 90th percentile in securities losses replaced 26 cents of every dollar of outflows with BTFP borrowing, compared to only 7 cents on average). Third, in addition to funding loan growth and deposit outflows, banks used the BTFP to build cash holdings, indicating that the program enabled banks to position themselves against potential future funding needs. Overall, we demonstrate that the BTFP enabled banks to meet funding needs and preserve liquidity during the period of stress.

We consider three ways that a monetary policy framework may employ a range for inflation outcomes: (1) ranges that acknowledge uncertainty about inflation outcomes (uncertainty ranges), (2) ranges that define the scope for intentional deviations of inflation from its target (operational ranges), and (3) ranges over which monetary policy will not react to inflation deviations (indifference ranges). After defining these three ranges, we highlight a number of costs and benefits associated with each. Our discussion of the indifference range is accompanied by simulations from the FRB/US model, illustrating the potential for long-term inflation expectations to drift within the range.

In a large panel of 26 emerging countries over the last 40 years, aggregate stock market return volatilities, our measure of uncertainty, forecast capital flows. When the stock market return volatility increases, capital inflows decrease and capital outflows increase. We propose a simple decomposition of each country's market return volatility into two components: countries differ by their exposure to systematic volatility, measured by their uncertainty betas, and by their country-specific volatility. Capital inflows respond to both systematic and country-specific shocks to volatility, and they respond more in high uncertainty beta countries. These results are all statistically significant. A simple portfolio choice model illustrates the impact of uncertainty on gross capital flows: in the model, foreigners are exposed to expropriation risk. When the probability of expropriation increases, foreigners sell the domestic assets to the domestic investors, leading to a counter-cyclical home bias.

In this paper, we examine how learning about disaster risk affects asset pricing in an endowment economy. We extend the literature on rare disasters by allowing for two sources of uncertainty: (1) the lack of historical data results in unknown parameters for the disaster process, and (2) the disaster takes time to unfold and is not directly observable. The model generates time variation in the risk premium through Bayesian updating of agents' beliefs regarding the likelihood and severity of disaster realization. The model accounts for the level and volatility of U.S. equity returns and generates predictability in returns.

The 2007-2009 recession is characterized by: a large drop in employment, an unprecedented decline in firm entry, and a slow recovery. Using confidential firm-level data, I show that financial constraints reduced employment growth in small relative to large firms by 4.8 to 10.5 percentage points. The effect of financial constraints is robust to controlling for aggregate demand and is particularly strong in small young firms. I show in a heterogeneous firms model with endogenous firm entry and financial constraints that a large financial shock results in a long-lasting recession caused by a "missing generation" of entrants.