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We investigate if the benchmark transition from London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) to Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) affects the costs of borrowing floating rate debt. The primary market for dollar-denominated floating rate notes (FRNs) provides an ideal laboratory to study these e ects. Comparing the spreads of FRNs linked to LIBOR and SOFR, issued by the same entity during the same month, we find a significantly lower yield spread for SOFR-linked debt after adjusting for the maturity-matched spreads from the swap market. In addition, despite identification challenges, we observe a quantitatively similar pattern in the syndicated loan market.

We explore the impact of low and negative monetary policy rates in core world economies on bank lending in four small open economies – Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway – using confidential bank-level data. Our results show that the impact on lending in these small open economies depends on the interest rate level in the core. When interest rates are high, monetary policy cuts in core economies can reduce credit supply in small open economies. In contrast, when interest rates in core economies are low, further expansionary monetary policy increases lending in small open economies, consistent with an international bank lending channel. These results have important policy implications, suggesting that central banks in small open economies should watch for the impact of potential regime switches in core economies’ monetary policy when rates shift to and from the very low end of the distribution.

Bilateral payment flows between banks may provide private information about a borrowing bank's liquidity position. This paper analyses whether private information on the bilateral payment flow of central bank reserves foster peer monitoring or whether the information is used to reduce search costs in the unsecured interbank market. In the former, banks with outflows of liquidity are penalized by their counterparties, while in the latter, these banks benefit through reduced search costs to find a liquidity provider. I use data from Norges Bank's real time gross settlement system over the period 2012 to 2015 to identify unsecured overnight interbank loans and payment flows. The results suggest that banks are using private information from payment flows to reduce search costs and not for peer monitoring. This has important implications for regulators' assessment of the pros and cons of a centralized versus a decentralized interbank market.

To shed light on the interaction between macroprudential and monetary policies, we study the inward transmission of foreign monetary policy in conjunction with domestic macroprudential and monetary policies in Norway and Sweden. Using detailed bank-level data we show how Norwegian and Swedish banks' lending reacts to monetary policy surprises arising abroad, controlling for the domestic macroprudential stance and the interaction between monetary and macroprudential policies. In both countries, the domestic macroprudential policy helps mitigate the effects arising after foreign monetary surprises.

We propose a model in which sticky expectations concerning shortterm interest rates generate joint predictability patterns in bond and currency markets. Using our calibrated model, we quantify the effect of this channel and find that it largely explains why short rates and yield spreads predict bond and currency returns. The model also creates the downward sloping term structure of carry trade returns documented by Lustig et al. (2019), difficult to replicate in a rational expectations framework. Consistent with the model, we find that variables that predict bond and currency returns also predict survey-based expectational errors concerning interest and FX rates. The model explains why monetary policy induces drift patterns in bond and currency markets and predicts that long-term rates are a better gauge of market’s short rate expectations than previously thought.

This paper investigates price discovery in foreign exchange (FX) swaps. Using data on inter-dealer transactions, we find that a 1 standard deviation increase in order flow (i.e. net pressure to obtain USD through FX swaps) increases the cost of dollar funding by up to 4 basis points after the 2008 crisis. This is explained by increased dispersion in dollar funding costs and quarter-end periods. We find central bank swap lines reduced the order flow to obtain USD through FX swaps, subsequently affecting the forward rate. In contrast, during quarter-ends and monetary announcements we observe high frequency adjustment of the forward rate.

We argue that the planned transition toward alternative benchmark rates gives reason to mourn Libor. Guided by a model in which banks and non-banks can lend to each other, subject to realistic regulatory constraints, we show empirically that tighter financial regulation increases interbank rates but lowers broad rates (in which lenders are non-banks) and that all market rates increase with more Treasury bill issuance. Hence, the proportion of non-bank lenders affects the alternative rates, introducing variation in the benchmark that is unrelated to banks' marginal funding costs and creating a basis between regions with interbank rates and broad rates.

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the power of forward guidance at different horizons, shedding new light on the strength of the “forward guidance puzzle”. Our identification strategy allows us to disentangle the change in future interest rates stemming from deviations from the systematic part of monetary policy (“target” and “forward guidance” shocks) and changes in future interest rates that are due to unanticipated revisions in the central bank’s economic outlook (“information” shocks). This enables us to make a qualitative assessment of the relative importance of forward guidance. We investigate to what extent the horizon of guidance matters for its macroeconomic effects, and find that the more forward the shock is, the weaker is its impact on output and inflation. This runs contrary to the prediction from standard New Keynesian models that the power of forward guidance increases with its horizon.

We propose a method to quantify narratives from textual data in a structured manner, and identify what we label "narrative monetary policy surprises" as the change in economic media coverage that can be explained by central bank communication accompanying interest rate meetings. Our proposed method is fast and simple, and relies on a Singular Value Decomposition of the different texts and articles coupled with a unit rotation identification scheme. Identifying narrative surprises in central bank communication using this type of data and identification provides surprise measures that are uncorrelated with conventional monetary policy surprises, and, in contrast to such surprises, have a significant effect on subsequent media coverage. In turn, narrative monetary policy surprises lead to macroeconomic responses similar to what recent monetary policy literature associates with the information component of monetary policy communication. Our study highlights the importance of written central bank communication and the role of the media as information intermediaries.

We investigate the reliability of the 'Furfine filter' often used to identify interbank loans and interest rates from interbank payments settled at central banks. To this end, we have been granted access to records of all unsecured overnight interbank loans during a month from the banks that participated in Norges Bank's real-time gross settlement system. The filter applied was able to identify each of these loans and correctly derive the associated interest rates. The filter's reliability is also supported by additional evidence based on the Norwegian Overnight Weighted Average (NOWA) interest rates beyond the survey month. Sensitivity analyses suggest the share of false or overlooked loans may remain small if the filter design largely incorporates interbank market conventions regarding loan size requests and interests rate quotes.

In this paper we study financial spillovers from the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy and communication, and whether they have consequences for the effectiveness of domestic monetary policy of small open economies. Recent work suggests that the "trilemma" in international economics as we used to know it, is actually a dilemma: small open economies with floating exchange rate regimes can only have independent monetary policies when the capital account is managed. Our findings show that domestic monetary policy is still effective, but that spillover effects, particularly from the ECB's communication, reduce domestic control over the longer end of the yield curve.

The responsiveness of house prices to monetary policy shocks depends on the nature of the shock – expansionary versus contractionary – and on local housing supply elasticities. These findings are established based on a panel of 263 US metropolitan areas. We test and find supporting evidence for the hypothesis that expansionary monetary policy shocks have a larger impact on house prices when supply elasticities are low. Our results also suggest that contractionary shocks are orthogonal to supply elasticities, as implied by downward rigidity of housing supply. A standard theoretical conjecture is that contractionary shocks have a greater impact on house prices than expansionary shocks, as long as supply is not perfectly inelastic. For areas with high housing supply elasticity, our results are in line with this conjecture. However, for areas with an inelastic housing supply, we find that expansionary shocks have a greater impact on house prices than contractionary shocks. We provide evidence that the direction of the asymmetry is related to a momentum effect that is more pronounced when house prices are increasing than when they are falling.

This paper studies the violation of the most basic no-arbitrage condition in international finance - Covered Interest Parity (CIP). We find that the CIP puzzle largely stems from funding liquidity differences, reflected in the marginal funding rates of the main arbitrageurs. With severe funding liquidity differences, it becomes impossible for FX swap intermediaries to quote prices such that CIP holds across the full rate spectrum. A narrow set of global top-tier banks enjoys risk-less arbitrage opportunities as dealers set quotes to avert order flow imbalances. A situation with persistent arbitrage opportunities emerges as an equilibrium outcome due to the constellation of market segmentation, the abundance of excess reserves and their remuneration in central banks' deposit facilities.

We investigate pricing and activity in the Norwegian unsecured overnight interbank market in response to a shift in the central bank's liquidity policy. In October 2011, to encourage interbank trading, banks were allotted quotas for their overnight deposits with remuneration at the key policy rate while that on overnight deposits beyond allotted quotas was set one percentage point lower. In addition, a target range for banks' total overnight deposits was introduced and supported by open market operations to counteract not only temporary liquidity shortfalls, but also surpluses. We document substantially higher interbank trading, lower interbank interest rates relative to the policy rate as well as lower interest rate volatility following the policy shift. Notably, while overnight interbank interest rates were generally above the key policy rate before the policy shift, they have been close to but generally below the key policy rate afterwards.

Is a strong commitment to monetary stability enough to ensure credibility? The recent literature suggests it might not be if the central bank cannot perform pure interest rate policy and has to resort to balance sheet policy: the central bank's financial strength (i.e. the long-term sustainability of its policy) is also a determinant of credibility. This paper provides historical evidence on the issue by focusing on the case of the Bank of England at the heyday of the classical gold standard. It shows that as the Bank was not perceived as having the means to fulfil all of its obligations, the efficacy of its interest rate policy was poor. Failing to reform for political economy reasons, the Bank eventually had to default on its formal convertibility mandate.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility (TAF) in alleviating the liquidity shortage in USD and reducing the spread between the 3-month Libor rate and the expected policy rate. I construct a proxy for the 3-month liquidity risk premium based on data from the FX forward market which enables me to (i) decompose the Libor spread into a liquidity premium and a credit premium, and (ii) test the effectiveness of the TAF in reducing the liquidity premium in money market spreads. I find that long-term (84-day) TAF auctions were effective in reducing the 3-month liquidity premium. Furthermore, a reduction in the liquidity premium led to a fall in the 3-month Libor spread in USD. Credit risk, however, seems to have been a rather modest factor in explaining the increase in the Libor spread during the financial crisis.

If central banks value the ex-post accuracy of their forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate. We explore whether this "forecast adherence" has influenced the monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Norges Bank, the two central banks with the longest history of publishing interest rate paths. We derive and estimate a policy rule for a central bank that is reluctant to deviate from its forecasts. The rule can nest a variety of interest rate rules. We find that policymakers appear to be constrained by their most recently announced forecasts.

We investigate whether overnight interbank loans and interest rates can be reliably inferred at the market and bank level from central banks' interbank payments data. We identify overnight loans and interest rates among interbank payments for 11 banks in Norway and compare them with the actual overnight loans and interest rates reported daily by these banks to the Norwegian central bank since October 2011. We find that interbank payments can provide reliable information about overnight lending and overnight interest rates at the market level, and even at the bank level, for relatively small overnight lenders and large overnight lenders that mostly lend on their own behalf.

We use a dynamic factor model and a detailed panel data set for six Norwegian bank groups to analyze i) how funding costs affect retail loan rates and ii) how retail rate differences between banks affect market shares. The data set consist of quarterly data for 2002Q1-2011Q3 and include information on loan volumes and retail (interest) rates for loans to firms and households. The cost of market funding is represented in our analysis by the three-month money market rate and a proxy for market risk { the credit spread on unsecured senior bonds issued by Norwegian banks. Our estimates clearly suggest incomplete pass-through: a 10 basis points increase in the market rate leads to an approximately 8 basis points increase in retail loan rates. We also find that credit demand from households is more elastic with regard to the loan rate than demand from businesses.

This paper addresses the lack of reliable information about overnight interest rates in the Norwegian interbank market. We infer actual interest rates from interbank transactions recorded in the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system of Norges Bank over the period October 2006 - November 2010. We propose a new measure of overnight interest rates, NONIA, which may be calculated daily as a value-weighted average of overnight interest rates on individual loans. This may supplement information provided by indicative interest rates such as NIBOR. We also calculate an indicator based on dispersion of interest rates across individual loans and the spread between NONIA and the Norges Bank's overnight deposit rate. This indicator may be useful for assessing whether overnight interest rates are close to the central bank key policy rate.

We use a dynamic factor model and a detailed panel data set with quarterly accounts data on all Norwegian banks to study the effects of banks' funding costs on their retail rates. Banks' funds are categorized into two groups: customer deposits and long-term wholesale funding (market funding from private and institutional investors including other banks). The cost of market funding is represented in the model by the three-month Norwegian Inter Bank Offered Rate (NIBOR) and the spread of unsecured senior bonds issued by Norwegian banks. Our estimates show clear evidence of incomplete pass-through: a unit increase in NIBOR leads to an approximately 0.8 increase in bank rates. On the other hand, the difference between banks' loan and deposit rates is independent of NIBOR. Our findings are consistent with the view that banks face a downward-sloping demand curve for loans and an upward-sloping supply curve for customer deposits. ___________________________Keywords: interest rates, NIBOR, pass-through, funding costs, bank panel data, dynamic factor model

We study overnight interbank interest rates paid by banks in Norway over the period 2006-2009. We observe large variations in interest rates across banks and over time. During the financial crisis, the interest rates are found to be substantially below indicative quotes of interest rates provided by major banks. Our econometric model attributes the interest rate variation partly to differences in banks' characteristics including relative size and connectedness, implying favorable terms for banks of systemic importance. Moreover, interest rates are found to depend not only on overall liquidity in the interbank market, but possibly on its distribution among banks as well, suggesting exploitation of market power by banks with surplus liquidity. There is also evidence of stronger effects on interest rates of systemic importance, credit ratings and liquidity demand and supply since the start of the current financial crisis.

We examine the importance of incorporating macroeconomic information and, in particular, accounting for model uncertainty when forecasting the term structure of U.S.interest rates. We start off by analyzing and comparing the forecast performance of several individual term structure models. Our results confirm and extend results found in previous literature that adding macroeconomic information, through factors extracted from a large number of individual series, tends to improve interest rate forecasts. We then show, however, that the predictive power of individual models varies over time significantly. Models with macro factors are the more accurate in and around recession periods. Models without macro factors do particularly well in low-volatility subperiods such as the late 1990s. We demonstrate that this problem of model uncertainty can be mitigated by combining individual model forecasts. Combining forecasts leads to encouraging gains in predictability, especially for longer-dated maturities, and importantly, these gains are consistent over time.

We estimate the interdependence between US monetary policy and the S&P 500 using structural VAR methodology. A solution is proposed to the simultaneity problem of identifying monetary and stock price shocks by using a combination of short-run and long-run restrictions that maintains the qualitative properties of a monetary policy shock found in the established literature (CEE 1999). We find great interdependence between interest rate setting and stock prices. Stock prices immediately fall by 1.5 percent due to a monetary policy shock that raises the federal funds rate by ten basis points. A stock price shock increasing stock prices by one percent leads to an increase in the interest rate of five basis points. Stock price shocks are orthogonal to the information set in the VAR model and can be interpreted as non-fundamental shocks. We attribute a major part of the surge in stock prices at the end of the 1990s to these non-fundamental shocks.

The notion of a natural real rate of interest, due to Wicksell (1936), is widely used in current central bank research. The idea is that there exists a level at which the real interest rate would be compatible with output at its potential level and stationary inflation. Such a consept is of primary concern for monetary policy because it provides a benchmark for the monetary policy stance. This paper applies the method recently suggested by T. Laubach and J.C.Williams to jointly estimate the natural real interest rate and the output gap in the euro area using data from 1960. Our results suggest that the natural real rate of interest has declined gradually over the past 40 years. They also indicate that monetary policy in the euro area was on average stimulative during the 1960s and the 1970s, while it contributed to dampen the output gap and inflation in the 1980s and 1990s.

This paper addresses cointegration in small cross-sectional panel data models. In addition to dealing with cointegrating relationships within the cross-sectional dimension, the paper explicitly addresses the issue of cointegration between cross-sections. The approach is based upon a well-known distributional result for the trace test when some of the cointegrating vectors are a priori known, and advocates a three-step procedure for the identification of the cointegrating space when dealing with two-dimensional data. The first step of this procedure utilizes traditional techniques to identify the long-run relationships within each cross-sectional unit separately. In the second step these first step relationships are then treated as known when searching for potential long run relationships between units in a joint analysis comprising the whole cross-sectional dimension. The third step of the procedure then finally reestimate all free parameters of the identified long-run structure to get rid of a potential simultaneity bias as a result of a non-diagonal covariance matrix. Identification of the long-run structures of Norwegian exports and international interest rate relationships are used as examples. Norwegian mainland exports have here been divided into two cross-sectional units; the traditional goods sector and the service sector. While in the study of international interest rate relationships the two sectors investigated are Germany and the US. The examples are used to address the more general issues of the degree of independence in capital markets and in goods markets of small open economies.

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine empirically the relationship between long-term interest rates in well integrated financial markets. The analysis focuses on long-term interest rates in the US and Germany and has been carried out within the framework of a five dimensional VAR for the simultaneous determination of short- and long-term interest rates in the US and Germany and the rate of exchange rate depreciation. The results strongly support the existence of a long-run relationship between the long-term German and the long-term US interest rate and imply a full pass-through of changes in the long-term US rate into the corresponding German rate. The analysis also substantiates that the direction of causality goes from the long-term US to the long-term German interest rate. With regard to the possibility of controlling the long end of the market on the part of the Bundesbank, the paper apparently takes on a rather pessimistic view, as there is nothing to indicate a long-run relationship between short-and long-term German interest rates. However, the strong influence that short-term German interest rates exhibit on German long-term interest rates in the very short run according to the structural model of this paper, might be taken to indicate that the opposite is the case, as effects originating from expectations of future short-term interest rates might totally neutralize an unequivocally positive short-run portfolio effect in the long run. If this is the case, there is nothing strange to the fact that one is unable to identify a long-run relationship between short- and long-term German interest rates. On the contrary, it is exactly what to be expected if the monetary transmission mechanism works appropriately.

This paper examines the performance of inflation forecast feedback rules in a two-sector, calibrated model of the U.K. economy. Under such rules, the interest rate responds to the deviation of the unchanged-interest-rate forecast of inflation from the inflation target. We find that this procedure may produce a high degree of nominal and real stability, even outperforming the optimal discretionary (flexible) inflation targeting strategy. In order to take adequate account of the exchange rate channel, the feedback horizon will need to be short. A feedback horizon of a year or more creates exchange rate volatility, resulting in higher variability in inflation and traded sector output.

The paper shows that the procedure of inflation forecast targeting arguably implemented by Sveriges Riksbank and the Bank of England may lead to high nominal and real variability; the latter being manifested most notably in the traded sector. A long inflation forecast targeting horizon results in extensive smoothing of interest rate movements. This implies only weak nominal interest rate responses to disequilibrium conditions, causing the real interest rate and hence the real exchange rate to fluctuate persistently. The paper offers an explanation for the recent large variability of Swedish inflation and UK manufacturing sector output.

Based on both single country models and panel data models uncovered interest rate parity is tested for ten European countries relative to Germany by regressing exchange rate changes on interest rate differentials. The period is from March 1979 to February 1996 at one month, three, six and twelve months maturity. Since exchange rate changes follow a non-normal distribution, the distribution of the test-statistic is bootstrapped from the sample. The bootstrapped confidence intervals are wider with larger upper limits than the confidence intervals based on the normal distribution. The regression coefficients, all estimated to be less than one, are considerably lower for long term maturities than for short term maturities, and lower for countries outside the ERM than for ERM countries. This is explained by differences in the variance of exchange rate changes and thereby by the risk premium between long and short term maturities and the risk premium between these two groups of countries.