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The coronavirus crisis has led to a sharp increase in the debt-to-GDP ratios of the euro area member states. Without external support, access to the capital market could be seriously threatened in the medium term for Italy, but also for other member states. While the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme, which is designed as a monetary policy instrument, is regarded by some as a violation of the prohibition of monetary financing, the Next Generation EU recovery fund is likely to direct the fundamental structures of the European Union towards a fiscal union with considerable redistribution elements. This article analyses an alternative strategy, namely debt relief by the European System of Central Banks through an EU debt agency. Such a scheme would be possible without amending the EU treaties and would avoid negative equity at the central banks. The question is under what circumstances would this approach be suitable and proportionate?

Authority of the European Central Bank (the Bank) over its operational norms in the eyes of market actors – Exogenous and endogenous authority and legitimacy – The reconciliation by the Bank and the Court of Justice of the EU (the Court) of the pre-existing norm and political-economic reality with Article 123 TFEU – Sovereign lender of last resort – Eurozone Crisis – Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) – Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) – Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP)

What role could unconventional monetary policy – and particularly unconventional policies like private asset purchases under a quantitative easing or lender of last resort scheme – play in influencing economic growth directly? A wide literature in economics explores the pros and cons of using these policies. However, most studies also point to the uncertain and antagonistic legal basis for such purchases. In this paper, we show how the statutory mandate for nominal GDP targeting could best put in place the legal foundations for such asset purchases. We review the legislative and regulatory bases for private securities purchases made by central banks in a sample of countries. We discuss – if legislators and policymakers wanted to – how they might introduce clearer mandates to make such purchases into their public law. We finally show how legal authorizations for GDP targeting might (and probably should) provide for such authorisations. Our discussion sheds light on the fascinating and almost completely ignored area of public law, namely central bank law.

In an article published in this journal in 2012, the author challenged the conventional wisdom that a major feature of Dodd‐Frank—the mandated clearing and required margining of OTC derivatives—could be expected to achieve a material reduction of the risk of another financial crisis In this article, the author views the dramatic financial fallout from the spread of COVID‐19 in March 2020, when the economic infrastructure of the U S was threatened by extreme disruptions in its stock and bond markets, as providing the first major test of this theory The author's main conclusion from this episode is that the very mechanism that advocates of Dodd‐Frank claimed would reduce systemic risk—the clearing of and imposition of margin requirements on derivatives—played a major role in this acute market dislocation by amplifying stresses on and dramatically reducing market liquidity One major implication of this analysis is that protecting important pieces of the system, such as clearinghouses, is not the same as protecting the entire system;indeed, these two goals are likely to prove to be antithetical under conditions of stress It was only massive injections of liquidity by the Federal Reserve, and not the autonomous operation of the market infrastructure mandated by Dodd‐Frank, that succeeded in stemming the crisis And as this case is meant to suggest, despite clearing mandates and other major regulatory changes designed to minimize systemic risk, the net effect has been to substitute possibly greater liquidity risks for credit risk As a consequence, the soundness of the U S financial system continues to depend on the prompt and effective intervention of the Fed as lender of last resort, with all the attendant moral hazard problems

What role does unconventional monetary policy – and particularly unconventional policies such as private asset purchases under quantitative easing or lender of last resort scheme – play in influencing economic growth directly? The literature looks at the effects of post‐2007 central bank asset purchases on GDP growth and – in limited cases – on investment. Yet academics and central bankers have not tried to understand the effects of private securities purchases alone, while controlling for broader macroeconomic effects. This article summarises the existing literature, documenting the widespread use of private securities purchases by central banks across the world. The literature shows the potentially beneficial effects of these purchases, pointing the way for further scholarly work about central banks' private securities purchases.

The design of lender-of-last-resort interventions can exacerbate the bank-sovereign nexus. During sovereign crises, central bank provision of long-term liquidity incentivizes banks to purchase high-yield eligible collateral securities matching the maturity of the central bank loans. Using unique security-level data, we find that the European Central Bank’s 3-year Long-Term Refinancing Operation caused Portuguese banks to purchase short-term domestic government bonds, equivalent to 10.6% of amounts outstanding, and pledge them to obtain central bank liquidity. The steepening of eurozone peripheral sovereign yield curves right after the policy announcement is consistent with the equilibrium effects of this “collateral trade.”

A core responsibility of the Federal Reserve is to ensure financial stability by acting as the “lender of last resort” through its discount window (DW). Historically, however, the DW has not been effective because its usage is stigmatized. In this paper, we develop a coordination game with adverse selection, and we test in the lab policies that have been proposed to mitigate DW stigma. We find that lowering the DW cost and making DW borrowing difficult to detect are ineffective, but regular random DW borrowing can overcome DW stigma. Implications for other forms of stigma in finance are discussed.

The article an attempt was made to trace the historical path of cooperation between Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund from the early 1990s, when Ukraine gained independence, to the present. The purpose of the International Monetary Fund's activity has been defined in Article I of the Fund's Statute and is to promote: international monetary cooperation; expansion and balanced growth of international trade;exchange rate stability, maintenance of proper exchange between participants; the creation of a multilateral system of payments for current transactions between members and the elimination of currency restrictions that impede the growth of world trade; reduction of terms and degree of imbalance of participants' balance of payments. The main task of Ukraine's cooperation with the International Monetary Fund is financial support and development of the economy as a whole, as well as its restructuring from a planned administrative type to a market one. In addition, Ukraine has been experiencing a difficult period since 2014 in the context of military conflict with the Russian Federation, as well as the loss of part of its territories that played an appropriate economic role in the country's life. The International Monetary Fund has become a major donor in such a difficult environment.The International Monetary Fund is a unique organization in the world in the number and diversity of member countries, while maintaining the status of a lender of last resort in the event of financial crises.The International Monetary Fund provides foreign currency loans to Member States for two purposes: to cover the balance of payments deficit (actually to replenish official foreign exchange reserves) and to support macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment of the economy (lending to government budget expenditures). As a result of the study, the authors concluded that Ukraine's cooperation with the IMF had several historical stages, characterized by its specificity and peculiarities. Also, cooperation between Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund has both positive and negative points. At the same time, without such cooperation, it is difficult, and often impossible, for Ukraine to maintain its balance of payments, forcing the country to continue working together with this reputable world institution.

Purpose This paper aims to examine how a central bank (CB) can act as a lender of last resort (LOLR) for both Islamic and conventional interest-based banks by pursuing a Qard-al-Hasan (QH)-based monetary policy (MP). Design/methodology/approach The role of the CB as LOLR under QH-based MP and its effects on major macroeconomic variables, including deposits, loan creation and aggregate expenditures, are examined on theoretical grounds by using the aggregate output and aggregate expenditure model under the framework of Islamic MP. Findings When the CB acts as LOLR by pursuing QH-based MP, it automatically empowers Islamic banks (IBs) by providing access to borrowing funds from the CB on a QH basis. As a result, IBs will not be required to hold billions of dollars as liquid assets against liquidity risks. Thus, the lending capacity of IBs will increase and deposit expansion, loan creation and aggregate expenditures in the economy will all expand. This will in turn increase real GDP and employment while reducing the unemployment rate. Originality/value This is the first paper to analyze CBs acting as LOLR for both IBs and conventional interest-based banks by pursuing a QH-based MP, thus providing equal opportunities and equal access to borrowing facilities from the CB, along with equal partnership and fair competition for all and absolutely no discrimination to anyone. The LOLR service to all banks under QH-based MP will unveil a new horizon of opportunities where all financial institutions are expected to thrive. IBs will escape the constraints of the constant fear of liquidity risks and find a level-playing field.

The biggest challenge for the Islamic banking industry in Pakistan is the scarcity of Shariah-compliant investment instruments and the absence of a lender of last resort (LOLR) facility for Islamic banks. Due to the problem of surplus liquidity, returns for Islamic banks in Pakistan are lower as compared to the conventional counterparts putting them at a competitive disadvantage with respect to their competitor conventional banks. Sukuk issuance is associated with a high cost of issuance and legal complexity, problems that could be solved by the application of blockchain technology. With the advent of cryptocurrency and developments around blockchain, technology experts, industry professionals along with Shariah scholars have been working to introduce FinTech in Shariah-compliant financing products and services. This research applies a qualitative approach. The study relies on primary data from interviews and secondary data from published sources, academic journals, government and private-sector reports, and public domain including newspaper articles, and websites. Interviews are conducted from blockchain technology experts along with banking \& commerce industry professionals. This study highlights financial instability, lack of financial education and absence of political will being the main reasons for low Sukuk issuance in Pakistan. This study proposes a low-cost smart Sukuk structure to address the liquidity problem of the Islamic banking industry in Pakistan. It is found that smart Sukuk issuance and transaction fees are much lower than the current Sukuk issuances and are expected to be more secure and marketable internationally. Blockchain-based smart Sukuk are practicable to solve the problem of standardization and huge issuance and maintenance cost for the Sukuk industry. The proposed structure could be adopted by governments and organizations to issue Sukuk promising transparent, economical, efficient, and reliable business transactions for both parties.

The COVID-19 run on medical resources crashed Wuhan’s medical care system, a medical disaster duplicated in many countries facing the COVID-19 pandemic. In a novel approach to understanding the run on Wuhan’s medical resources, we draw from bank run theory to analyze the causes and consequences of the COVID-19 run on Wuhan’s medical resources and recommend policy changes and government actions to attenuate runs on medical resources in the future. Like bank runs, the cause of the COVID-19 medical resource run was rooted in China’s local medical resource context and a sudden realignment of expectations, reflecting shortages and misallocations of hospital resources (inadequate liquidity and portfolio composition), high level hospitals siphoning-off patients from lower level health providers (bank moral hazard and adverse selection problem), patients selecting high-level hospitals over lower-level health care (depositor moral hazard problem), inadequate government oversight and uncontrolled risky hospital behavior (inadequate bank regulatory control), biased medical insurance schemes (inadequate depositor insurance), and failure to provide medical resource reserves (failure as lender of last resort). From Wuhan’s COVID-19 run on medical resources, we recommend that control and reform by government enlarge medical resource supply, improve the capacity of primary medical care, ensure timely virus information, formulate principles for the allocation of medical resources that suit a country’s national conditions, optimize the medical insurance schemes and public health fund allocations and enhance the emergency support of medical resources.

When a government implements an LOLR policy during a crisis, creditors can infer a bank’s quality by whether the bank borrows government loans. We establish a formal model to study an LOLR policy in the presence of this signaling effect. We find that three equilibria exist: a separating equilibrium where only low quality banks borrow from the government and two pooling equilibria where both high and low quality banks do and do not borrow from the government. Further, we find that the government’s lending rate serves an important signaling role and that hiding the identity of the banks that borrow government loans tends to encourage banks to do so. We also find two welfare effects of the LOLR policy: the liquidation cost saving and moral hazard. Depending on which effect dominates, the optimal LOLR policy differs.

The latest financial crises in Europe and the United States have reminded us of the importance of the role of central banks as Lender of Last Resort. This article examines the current legal framework in the European Union with regard to the allocation of Lender of Last Resort competence, which until now has been exercised by the national central banks in the Eurozone. The new Emergency Liquidity Assistance Agreement 2017 sustains this institutional design, leaves the Emergency Liquidity Assistance competence with the national central banks and specifies the cooperation between the European Central Bank and the national central banks with regard to the veto-option of the European Central Bank to national Emergency Liquidity Assistance operations. Against this background, the paper discusses whether the current legal competence structure of the European and Monetary Union would also allow for more authority of the European Central Bank with regard to Emergency Liquidity Assistance powers. The paper concludes there is a sufficient legal basis in the monetary policy and financial stability mandate of the European Central Bank to allow it to grant Emergency Liquidity Assistance at least with regard to ‘significant’ banks, as defined under the current European Banking Supervision regime.

Compared to the history of money and banking, the history of central banking is fairly brief and has been influenced by the development of modern nation states, by the economic environment and by technological advances. Accordingly, on-going innovations in digital technologies and the globalization of the economy are expected to have significant impacts on central banking in the future. Since all the core activities of central banking, such as the issuance of money, the operation of settlement systems, its function as lender of last resort and its monetary policy, are based upon “trust”, its history has been, and its future will also be, closely linked to the most efficient framework in terms of building trust and reflecting changing technological and institutional conditions. Even though digital innovation may influence the styles of central banks in the future, the relevance and effectiveness of their payment and settlement infrastructures, their function as lenders of last resort and their monetary policies will be maintained. Besides, the need for risk-free central bank money will remain strong on account of its capacity to reduce risks in economic transactions, and central banks will have to continue making efforts to meet these demands through the enhancement of the utility of their infrastructure, including real-time gross settlement systems. Regarding central bank digital currencies, many issues require further examination. The future of central banking will be closely interlinked with that of nation states and depends on its capacity to identify the ideal mode of utilizing information and data in the economy.

This article investigates the classical monetary theory on bank liquidity and finance and especially the contribution of Thomas Tooke, John Stuart Mill and John Fullarton at the light of the debate on the Great Recession. These authors show how financial markets and banking system may collapse altogether after a rise of values in certain classes of securities or real estate markets. And they come to the view that competition between commercial banks creates the appearance of market discipline, while the expectation of scarcity in some specific markets leads to a speculative process, which in turn destabilizes the banking system and triggers the need for the lender of last resort.

The relevance of the research subject is due to the fact that countries look for adaptive approaches to the turbulence of the international monetary system (IMS). The approaches of the BRICS countries to the IMS transformation have been fully studied in the economic literature. However, there are no researches on foundation of an advanced central bank as an alternative supranational monetary institution in the new international fnancial architecture. The article objective is to develop a mechanism for setting up the refnancing rate for the BRICS countries in case of the integration hypothesis the currency union, and the lender of last resort and the general unit of accounts. A liberal pricing method has been used to create the model. There is a hypothesis that the refnancing rate should be set at a higher level than that of the People’s Bank of China’s and lower than that of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa’s, since it has comparative advantages in crediting. The mechanism of the consensual rate of the BRICS countries is based on the assumption that the amount of money in circulation may vary by an amount that does not cause negative consequences for national economies. The fundamental difference between the results of this study is in optimization of the credit resources flow, which implies their distribution within certain limits and in several stages. The main provisions indicate that the optimal rate may provide a background for the coordination of monetary policies in the BRICS countries within the Central bank. The practical relevance of the model is that it can be used to establish the refnancing rate in the BRICS countries. The model suggests that the optimal crediting value in the BRICS countries should ft the GDP growth limits. To conclude, the optimal refnancing rate is a key issue in forming a monetary union and a common currency in the BRICS countries.

Indonesia has managed the complex challenges of the global economy well. The country's capital outflows were smaller in 2018 than during the Taper Tantrum in 2013; the rupiah had regained most of its lost ground by January 2019; the Indonesian stock market has outperformed its peers; growth is forecast to remain stable; inflation is low; unemployment remains below its five-year average; consumer and business confidence are robust; and the government budget has improved through a smaller deficit and cheaper borrowing costs. But significant risks remain. This paper assesses these risks and evaluates the adequacy of Indonesia's crisis management framework. It finds that the framework has serious deficiencies that could see liquidity challenges become systemic solvency crises. The framework effectively removes Bank Indonesia as the lender of last resort, risks politicising the process of crisis response, and could mean slower, less effective responses to crises. This paper explores how the framework could be improved and what reforms could be undertaken to deepen Indonesia's financial system, strengthen financial resilience, and boost the long-term growth outlook.

The present paper attempts to expand the existing literature on Central Bank Independence (CBI) by proposing new measures for CBI. It designs two indices: one tackling the de jure CBI and the other assessing the de facto level of CBI. The two measures outweigh traditional measures in various aspects; first, the two indices are more comprehensive in terms of possible institutional arrangements. The de jure index incorporates several aspects related to CBI that were not previously grouped together in a unified index i.e. financial independence, limitations related to indirect credit to government, accountability and transparency. The de facto index comprises the main existing indicators for measuring actual CBI (i.e. turnover ratio, political vulnerability indicator and monetary policy reaction function) in addition to new variables, as the lender of last resort function, independence of central bank board, and financial independence that were not included in almost all previous studies. Second, the two indices allow a higher level of precision as they comprise aspects that can be objectively codified with a minimum level of subjectivity. Third, the two indices cover the same attributes of CBI to facilitate measuring the deviation between de jure and de facto level of independence for any central bank. The current paper provides a comprehensive definition and analysis of both indices to enable their replication in future studies.

We show that lender of the last resort (LOLR) policy contributes to higher bank interconnectedness and systemic risk. Using novel micro-level data, we analyze the haircut gap channel of LOLR – the difference between the private market and central bank haircuts. LOLR increases interconnectedness by incentivizing banks to pledge higher haircut gap bonds, especially issued by similar banks and by systemically important banks. LOLR also exacerbates cross-pledging of bank bonds. Higher haircut gaps only incentivize banks, not other intermediaries without LOLR access, to increase bank bond holdings. Finally, LOLR revives bank bond issuance associated with higher haircut gaps.

This chapter examines the effects of private cryptocurrencies in dual system (conventional and Islamic), an area which has not been critically addressed in the literature. Despite the benefits of private cryptocurrencies, we highlight some challenges that private cryptocurrencies pose for financial stability. We show that the widespread use of private currencies causes a compromised payment system notably with the absence of guarantee mechanisms. Moreover, the impacts of cryptocurrencies on commercial bank activities may exacerbate financial stability risks. The loss of control over monetary policy and the lack of lender of last resort of Central Bank lead to higher exposition to systemic risk. Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency compatible with sharia can avoid many concerns and ensure better financial stability and social cohesion in a dual system.

The crisis management and deposit insurance (CMDI) framework in the euro area requires a reset. Currently the framework is far more likely to manufacture a crisis rather than enable the authorities to manage one. Specifically, the current framework is far more likely to trigger the doom loop between weak banks and weak governments than to terminate or untie it. Nor will the current framework necessarily protect deposits. There is no guarantee that a euro in covered deposits will remain a euro, if the bank in which the deposit is held fails, and/or the Member State in which the failing bank is headquartered defaults. The CMDI framework aims to enhance financial stability, limit recourse to taxpayer money, promote competition and protect depositors. These policy objectives remain valid. What needs to change is the method that authorities use to achieve those objectives. First, the approach needs to integrate micro- and macro- aspects of crisis management. In particular, the approach needs to take account of the prospective roles of the European Stability Mechanism, both as a provider of credit to Member States as well as a guarantor of the Single Resolution Fund. Second, the approach needs encompass the central bank as a provider of liquidity to banks individually and to the market as a whole. Finally, the approach needs to recognize that by the time any reform proposed as a result of this review would become effective, the SRB and the significant institutions in the euro area will have completed the transition and become fully resolvable via bail-in. This affords the euro area the opportunity to reset expectations about resolution. The euro area should take this opportunity to make the crisis management and deposit insurance framework more European and more uniform. Specifically, there should be a single presumptive path for dealing with failed banks: the use of bail-in to facilitate the orderly liquidation under a solvent- wind down strategy. This will protect deposits and set the stage for the transformation of the Single Resolution Fund (SRF) into the Single Deposit Guarantee Scheme (SDGS) with a backstop from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). In addition, measures should be taken to avoid forbearance, including the transfer of responsibility for emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) from national central banks to the ECB to create a single lender of last resort. Finally, national deposit guarantee schemes should become investors of last resort in the gone-concern capital of the failing bank. This will ensure that the orderly liquidation approach extends to all banks, including those without access to capital markets. Together, these measures would complete Banking Union, promote market discipline, avoid imposing additional burdens on taxpayers, help untie the doom loop between weak banks and weak governments, strengthen the euro and enhance financial stability.

In this chapter we review the function of the central bank as lender of last resort (LOLR), starting from the understanding of financial crises developed in the previous chapter. We recall long-established LOLR principles: proactive lending, inertia of the central bank risk control framework, and risk endogeneity. Because of its systemic role, a central bank should not tighten its collateral framework in a crisis, as restrictive policies are likely to not only increase the overall damage done by a crisis to society, but to even increase central bank losses. We explain in more detail the main reasons why a central bank should act as LOLR: prevent negative externalities from fire sales; its unique status as institution with unlimited liquidity; its status as a risk-free counterparty making others accept to deliver collateral to it even at high haircuts; and its mandate to preserve price stability. We distinguish three different forms of LOLR: elements built into the regular operational framework; readiness to relax parameters in a crisis; and provision of emergency liquidity assistance to individual firms. We then discuss what could be the optimal propensity of a central bank to engage in LOLR activities and outline possible trade-offs. Last but not least, we develop a bank-run model which highlights the role of asset liquidity and central bank eligible collateral. We calculate through a model variant with binary asset liquidity and uniform central bank collateral haircut, but then also introduce a model variant with continuous asset liquidity and haircuts.

This chapter introduces the system of accounts of the main sectors of the economy (households; non-financial corporations, the government; banks, and the central bank), describing how these sectors are interrelated through financial claims and liabilities. A financial system, consisting of commercial banks and the central bank, manages flows of funds originating from households, without these flows causing a need for the real sectors to liquidate illiquid real assets. The basic types of assets and liabilities are: real goods, gold, banknotes, deposits, bonds, loans, and equity. We explain how the shortcomings of both IOU and commodity-money based financial systems can be solved via establishing a central bank. A central bank is defined here by its balance sheet and central bank money is the central bank’s basic liability. Both monetary policy implementation and lender of last resort issues relate to liquidity flows within balance sheets. Understanding the logic of basic financial flows is therefore the basis for understanding central banking.

This article substantiates the need to use monetary policy in the financial recovery of banks. Its role in the period of crisis phenomena in the economy and in the banking system, the composition of monetary instruments and their features are determined. It is substantiated that in the conditions of stabilization of the domestic banking sector the regulatory direction of the NBU actions was aimed primarily at supporting the liquidity of the banking system of Ukraine through intensification of refinancing mechanisms, changes in reserve policy, restraining the outflow of funds outside the banking system. Monetary instruments that had a direct impact on the financial recovery of banks in the study period are considered — the discount rate, required reserves, repo transactions, purchase and sale of government securities, swap transactions. An analysis of dynamic changes in the discount rate as the main monetary instrument, according to which the NBU sets a benchmark for money market participants on the value of borrowed and placed funds for the period, revealed the benefits of lowering the discount rate for banks and the economy. The use of the NBU as a lender of last resort to maintain the liquidity of banks at the required level is a tool such as refinancing their active operations. The peculiarities of its use by the NBU and the evolution of changes to date have been clarified. The role of operations of purchase (granting liquidity) and sale (withdrawal of liquidity) of government securities carried out by the NBU to support the liquidity of banks has been clarified. The regulator proposes to use effective monetary instruments and measures to ensure the smooth functioning of the banking system. Thus, banks entered the pandemic period without significant imbalances, sufficiently capitalized and highly liquid. The work to clean up and increase the stability of the banking system, carried out since 2015, has yielded an undeniable positive result. On the contrary, they have supported business and will help restore economic growth in the future by provi­ding loans. Since the crisis unfolded, most banks have quickly shifted to working online. Despite the temporary reduction in the number of operating branches, the availability of banking services has not decreased.

The introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) allows the central bank to engage in large-scale intermediation by competing with private financial intermediaries for deposits. Yet, since a central bank is not an investment expert, it cannot invest in long-term projects itself, but relies on investment banks to do so. We derive an equivalence result that shows that absent a banking panic, the set of allocations achieved with private financial intermediation will also be achieved with a CBDC. During a panic, however, we show that the rigidity of the central bank's contract with the investment banks has the capacity to deter runs. Thus, the central bank is more stable than the commercial banking sector. Consumers internalize this feature ex-ante, and the central bank arises as a deposit monopolist, attracting all deposits away from the commercial banking sector. This monopoly might endanger maturity transformation.

Central bank responses to COVID-19 have been extraordinary in speed, in size and in scope. Much easier monetary policy, massive liquidity provision, and targeted credit support to the real economy all played a role in stabilizing financial conditions and credit. On net, there is preliminary evidence that central bank actions have been a positive-for access to credit and for the real economy-during very trying times. But the first six months have made clear that central bank policy can only indirectly address the core economic policy challenges of the crisis, whose trajectory remains highly uncertain. The risks to the economy and financial system remain very large, and key policy questions-on the degree of fiscal policy support to the real economy, about the limits of central bank risk taking and monetization of debt, and about the wisdom of heavy reliance on central bank policies given their impact on leverage and debt levels-remain just that.

Bank's asset fire sales and recourse to central bank credit are modelled with continuous asset liquidity, allowing to derive the liability structure of a bank. Both asset sales liquidity and the central bank collateral framework are modeled as power functions within the unit interval. Funding stability is captured as a strategic bank run game in pure strategies between depositors. Fire sale liquidity and the central bank collateral framework determine jointly the ability of the banking system to deliver maturity transformation without endangering financial stability. The model also explains why banks tend to use the least liquid eligible collateral with the central bank and why a sudden non-anticipated reduction of asset liquidity, or a tightening of the collateral framework, can trigger a bank run. The model also shows that the collateral framework can be understood, beyond its aim to protect the central bank, as financial stability and non-conventional monetary policy instrument., 19 pages, comments are very welcome

By the end of the eighteenth century, there were many local or regional banks in the UK and most of them issued letters of credit (LOCs) from people or firms would be settled (discounted) by the same bank. But the number of banks in the country increased rapidly as inter-regional trade increased (along with the canal traffic). During that period, LOCs were increasingly replaced by “bills” (or IOU’s) representing present or future claims by merchants for goods or services provided by them to customers. Checks came into use around that time. Nowadays the immediate claims by individuals are usually transfers from one bank to another via credit or debit cards. Businesses use electronic transfers for the most part. But only a few years ago, bills for small transactions were paid by paper checks on a bank account. Those checks had to be collected and redistributed by a “clearinghouse.” The “back offices” of banks had to cope with payments into and out of each of the accounts of each of their depositors, and then send checks on other banks to the clearinghouse.

Here we present a novel analysis of the geographic evolution of international banking since 1980, which addresses still unanswered questions about the role of offshore centers in the global financial crisis, and the post-crisis stability of these centers. We show that post-1980 regulatory shifts prompted a ‘Great Inversion’ of offshore banking, wherein conventional Euromarket activity was partially overshadowed by the growth of European ‘midshore’ center national banks. As a result, offshore jurisdictions (i) were likely more responsible for pre-crisis regulatory failures in a home than host regulator capacity and (ii) internalized far greater domestic fiscal risks than in previous crises.

The Federal Reserve has long used policy frameworks to both explain and inform its policymaking. These policy frameworks typically explain what the Fed is seeking to achieve in a given domain and how it plans to achieve its desired aims. Two prominent examples are the Fed’s use of Bagehot’s dictum when acting as a lender of last resort and its monetary policy framework issued in 2012 and revised in 2020. In both instances, the framework provides a foundation for informed debate among Fed policymakers, Congress, and the public, enhancing both efficacy and accountability. Since the onset of the Covid crisis, the Fed has entered into a new domain of credit policy, but it has yet to provide a cohesive policy framework explaining what it is seeking to achieve and how it plans to accomplish given aims. This has made it far harder to assess whether the myriad new credit facilities that the Fed has created have in fact achieved desired aims and the drawbacks of those facilities. Just as importantly, it contributed to a disconnect between what Congress expected when it gave the Fed and Treasury $454 billion in the CARES Act and Fed and Treasury’s failure to use more than a fraction of those funds despite ongoing economic headwinds. Developing a cohesive framework for credit policy may not be an easy task, but the challenges embedded in the task are precisely what make it so important.

The Bank of England, established in 1694, initially acting as agent of the government to finance costly wars, gradually evolved to becoming a true central bank in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although a privately owned company pursuing commercial activities, it increasingly took on the role of ensuring a smooth functioning of the financial system as a whole. With some regularity the Bank stepped in as lender of last resort, freely lending to solvent firms in difficulty against good collateral and at a penalty rate. This approach is generally followed to this day. The British practice of conducting open buying and selling operations on the money market were gradually introduced elsewhere. The Bank, serving as custodian of the governments’ gold holdings, evolved into the bankers’ bank as commercial banks started to deposit their gold with it for safety and efficiency reasons. London as an international financial center remained dominant well into the twentieth century, the position as backstop of the Bank of England providing the necessary confidence.

We address the paradox that financial innovations aimed at risk-sharing appear to have made the world riskier. Financial innovations facilitate hedging idiosyncratic risks among agents, however, aggregate risks can be hedged only with liquid assets. When risk-sharing is primitive, agents self-hedge and hold more liquid assets, this buffers aggregate risks, resulting in few correlated failures compared to when there is greater risk sharing. We apply this insight to build a model of a clearinghouse to show that as risk-sharing improves, aggregate liquidity falls but correlated failures rise. Public liquidity injections, for example, in the form of a lender-of-last-resort can reduce this systemic risk ex post, but induce lower ex-ante levels of private liquidity, which can in turn aggravate welfare costs from such injections.

Financial institutions play a key role in addressing problems of information asymmetry, adverse selection, and moral hazard. Commercial banks fundamentally take deposits and make loans, but provide other retail, commercial, and global wholesale services. Investment banks perform two basic functions: providing an array of services for corporations and governments needing funds, and performing services as brokers and dealers to investors. Some significant business areas are trading, research, merger and acquisition services, capital raising, and asset securitization. Central banks have slightly different roles in different countries. The US Fed oversees and regulates financial institutions, executes monetary policy, and acts as lender of last resort, among other functions. “Challenger banks” are disruptors which are: all mobile, user friendly, data driven, AI (Artificial Intelligence) enhanced, with open APIs (application program interface), no foreign exchange fees, robo investment advisory, and simplified money transfers. Insurance companies, pension funds, and hedge funds are also important to environmental, social, and governance investing.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, regulation mandates the clearing of the CDS market through Central Clearing Counter-parties (CCPs). Large CCPs are now designated as ’Global Systemically Important Institutions’ (GSIIs), whose unlikely-but-plausible failure threatens global financial market stability. This work examines CCP resilience following a large dealer member’s default and the ensuing default contagion. In unwinding the defaulter’s positions, the CCP faces the price impact of constrained member liquidations and unconstrained members’ predatory selling. The variation margin captures the effect of price-mediated contagion and its amplification. A novel spatial measure captures the covariance between members’ CDS holdings and the CDS being unwound. Key results show: Liquidations by constrained members lower the CCP’s profits and make cds-spreads less informative. There exists a strong conflict between predatory competition and dealer distress, which inadvertently makes dealers prey on themselves. In turn, the adoption of a risk-sharing guarantee fund structure would provide a natural disciplinary mechanism for predation – minimizing overall CCP and member losses. A dynamic simulation, calibrated to OTC market data, supports these theoretical results with parameter magnitudes and sensitivities. Examination of three market liquidity scenarios provides intuition for effective liquidity injection by a Lender of Last Resort.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has dual institutional roles: a steward of international financial stability and a global banker safeguarding the resources of its sovereign shareholders. But, how does the IMF behave when its balance sheet becomes exposed to higher-than-usual credit risk, creating a financial catch-22? We expect the IMF varies its lending behavior, based on the nature of sovereign credit crises. When there is high contagion risk, the IMF aims to preserve global financial stability as a lender of last resort by extending large loans, notwithstanding its balance sheet strains. The IMF employs policy conditionality to hedge its lending risk, but prioritizes alleviating global market turmoil over program compliance. When market contagion is contained, however, the IMF is more likely to act as a traditional banker, suspending programs for non-compliance. Ironically, given its tendency to forgive non-compliance as a lender of last resort, our theoretical framework suggests that the Fund intensifies its moral hazard problem. We test our theoretical priors by conducting a comparative case study analysis of IMF decision-making over time for two of its largest borrowers: Argentina and Greece. Leveraging volumes of hundred-paged minutes from IMF executive board meeting archives and extensive field research interviews, we illustrate the lending stances of IMF directors evolve in response to changes in global contagion risk. By examining the IMF’s own institutional agency under high financial risk, this study offers new insights for the study of international political economy and international organizations.

COVID-19 has brought to light a reality that had been mostly forgotten in an era of ample dollar liquidity: the excessive dependence of emerging economies on external financing. The sudden increase in global risk aversion arising from COVID-19 has caused investors to rush to safe assets and to the dollar, away from no-reserve currencies. The COVID-19 shock has also sharply reduced emerging markets’ access to dollars, exports, tourism receipts and even remittances, as the shock also affects the countries where migrants earn their incomes. The fiscal and monetary room emerging economies have to respond is limited, and the lack of automatic stabilisers on the fiscal side also means that fiscal policy does not have the same redistributive effects during a severe shock as in the developed world. In principle, various options are available to confront liquidity problems: domestic monetary policy, capital controls, dipping into foreign exchange reserves, regional schemes such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation, central bank swap lines, and International Monetary Fund programmes. But not all these options are available to most countries. Central banks’ responses to the pandemic have been much less aggressive in the emerging world than in the west, as their currencies have plummeted in many cases, increasing the cost of dollar liabilities. Capital controls are temporary and costly. Self-insurance and regional insurance schemes are unavailable to many economies, particularly in Latin America. The United States Federal Reserve has reacted quickly with swap lines to key central banks, but this is only a partial option because the Fed risks being overburdened in its attempt to provide cross-border dollar liquidity. The IMF remains the most obvious lender of last resort for emerging economies, but needs to make two changes to become more effective: a more targeted set of facilities with quicker disbursement and less conditionality; and increased financial resources.

This essay explores the evolution of my thinking on risky emergency lending to banks and non-banks. The Fed is now, in the Pandemic, engaging in lending with significant credit risk. While it appears these are Fed programs, in fact this lending is controlled by, and may be largely determined, by the Treasury. This is proper but should be clear. Lending with significant credit risk is a fiscal decision and should be made by the elected government not by an independent agency, whether made to banks or non-banks. And it should be the Treasury’s role, as advised by the Fed, to determine when there is significant credit risk. When there is no significant credit risk, the Fed should make the lending decision, without control or approval of the Treasury, again whether to banks or non-banks, as part of their role as liquidity supplier and lender of last resort. If there is disagreement as to whether there is significant credit risk the Treasury’s view should prevail.

Between 1860 and 1866, monetary and banking policy in Brazil went through multiple changes. Starting with the 1860 Law of Impediments (Law 1083) and accompanying legislation, the government instituted a timetable for issuing banks to resume convertibility of their notes exclusively into gold. Eruption of a financial panic in 1864, centered on the operation of the private banking house of J. Souto, revealed that the government’s focus on the regulation of joint-stock banks alone was myopic. By acting as a lender of last resort during the panic, the Bank of Brazil increasingly distanced itself from the government’s goal of reinstating convertibility of notes into gold. Growing budget deficits associated with the Paraguayan War, which had started in December 1864, ultimately led the government to rescind the Bank’s issuing powers in September 1866, ushering in a long period dominated by the Treasury’s monopoly of note issues.

The COVID-19 financial response brought a seismic shift in the allocation of authority between Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve. According to the classic division of labor, Congress claims the “power of the purse” or the constitutional authority to appropriate public funds; the Treasury holds responsibility over the spending and taxing that puts those orders into effect; and the Federal Reserve engages in money creation as part of its role making monetary policy and acting as lender of last resort. Drawing on that theory of separated powers, the essay reconstructs the traditional ways of thinking that distinguished money creation by the Fed from the congressional power of the purse. Most notably, approaches to the Fed have downplayed the distributive implications of its money creation powers by casting them as merely a stabilizing force, either backstopping private lending in times of panic or maintaining the health of credit markets more generally. We then analyze the COVID-19 liquidity facilities at the heart of the Federal government’s response to the current crisis. Established by the Fed, these facilities are shaped in non-transparent ways by the Treasury’s authority to protect the Fed from losses. With only $450 billion in congressional appropriations, the facilities are anticipated to lend $4.5 trillion, an amount the size of the 2019 federal budget. In our view, the facilities collapse the traditional narrative that distinguished Fed money creation from congressional appropriations. We conclude that that traditional narrative was problematic from the start. Congress’s inability to take responsibility over Fed credit support calls for a more structural reform in our financial system- one compatible with democratic governance and distributive justice.

When a liquidity crisis hits non-bank financial intermediaries, which central bank interventions help? We show that investment funds faced large investor outflows as the COVID-19 shock hit and assess the effectiveness of central bank asset purchases and additional liquidity provision to banks in alleviating the crisis. We use detailed fund-level data and proprietary data on bank take-ups in liquidity-providing operations and bank-fund repo transactions. Analyzing asset purchases, we find that funds with higher shares of assets eligible for central bank purchases in their portfolio before the COVID-19 crisis saw their performance improve by 3.7% and outflows decrease by 63% relative to otherwise similar funds. Analyzing repo activity, we find that additional central bank liquidity provision supported bank repo lending to funds, by alleviating bank liquidity constraints. Banks more exposed to the March 2020 liquidity crisis that took up central bank liquidity increased their repo transactions with funds by 3% to 4% compared to other banks. Our results suggest that central bank interventions were effective in stopping fire-sale dynamics and staving off runs on non-bank financial intermediaries, even though funds did not have direct access to the lender of last resort.

This Article argues that the frameworks put in place to allow for the orderly resolution of large financial institutions suffer from a liquidity problem. This is because post-crisis reforms enjoined central banks from providing liquidity to financial firms during and immediately after resolution. By creating a bright line rule, which essentially prohibited lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) operations once a firm enters resolution proceedings, there is a risk that short-term debt can no longer be rolled over, thereby increasing financial stability risks. As this Article shows, however, there are important differences between the United States (U.S.) and Europe. While the U.S. Congress at least sought to minimize liquidity gaps in resolution by throwing the fiscal firepower of the U.S.’s in the ring, European lawmakers failed to agree on a genuine, common backstop for the resolution of significant credit institutions, only leaving a small window for national solutions. To ensure that the core objectives of resolution, which include allocating losses to equity and long-term debt holders rather than to taxpayers, the central bank should be given a limited LOLR role to shore up the resolved firm’s funding. This LOLR function ought to be guaranteed by the fiscal authority, subject to ex-ante volume limits, and provide only short-term credit. Moreover, to further mitigate latent moral hazard risks and to create a counterweight to the extended LOLR function, the Article advocates for higher capital requirements.