Search

The Eurosystem's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) increased the scarcity of safe assets, which caused significant declines and substantial dispersion in European repo rates. However, banks holding these safe assets benefited from this development: First, using the German security register, this paper shows that scarcity affects bank funding costs, as their collateral supply is determined by their ex ante securities holdings and repo rates. Second, it makes use of the German credit register to show that asset scarcity had real effects: Banks more exposed to asset scarcity increased their credit supply.

The Federal Reserve's "balance-sheet normalization," which reduced aggregate reserves between 2017 and September 2019, increased repo rate distortions, the severity of rate spikes, and intraday payment timing stresses, culminating with a significant disruption in Treasury repo markets in mid-September 2019. We show that repo rates rose above efficient-market levels when the total reserve balances held at the Federal Reserve by the largest repo-active bank holding companies declined and that repo rate spikes are strongly associated with delayed intraday payments of reserves to these large bank holding companies. Intraday payment timing stresses are magnified by early-morning settlement of Treasury security issuances. Substantially higher aggregate levels of reserves than existed in the period leading up to September 2019 would likely have eliminated most or all of these payment timing stresses and repo rate spikes.

We devise a neural network based compression/completion methodology for financial nowcasting. The latter is meant in a broad sense encompassing completion of gridded values, interpolation, or outlier detection, in the context of financial time series of curves or surfaces (also applicable in higher dimensions, at least in theory). In particular, we introduce an original architecture amenable to the treatment of data defined at variable grid nodes (by far the most common situation in financial nowcasting applications, so that PCA or classical autoencoder methods are not applicable). This is illustrated by three case studies on real data sets. First, we introduce our approach on repo curves data (with moving time-to-maturity as calendar time passes). Second, we show that our approach outperforms elementary interpolation benchmarks on an equity derivative surfaces data set (with moving time-to-maturity again). We also obtain a satisfying performance for outlier detection and surface completion. Third, we benchmark our approach against PCA on at-the-money swaption surfaces redefined at constant expiry/tenor grid nodes. Our approach is then shown to perform as well as (even if not obviously better than) the PCA which, however, is not be applicable to the native, raw data defined on a moving time-to-expiry grid)., Comment: his article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Computational Finance, publishedby Incisive Media Ltd

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.

The Central Bank of Sweden declares the use of the Svensson's concept of inflation forecast targeting (IFT). It means that the repo rate decision making process depends on the central banks' forecasts. The concept evolved from the strict IFT with the decision making algorithm called the 'rule of thumb' to the flexible IFT which later includes the optimal monetary policy plan. The aim of the article is to: (1) analyse the influence of the inflation rate and GDP growth rate on the repo rate decisions, (2) analyse the influence of the inflation rate and GDP growth rate forecasts (in two year horizon) on the repo rate decisions in Sweden in years 1999-2006. The main research question is as follows: did the Monetary Policy Commitee in Sweden in years 1999-2006 made the decisions on the repo rates on the basis of forecast-based instrument rules and the rule of the thumb algorithm. The analysis encompasses the repo rates decisions, CPI inflation rate, GDP growth rate, central paths of CPI inflation forecasts and central paths of GDP growth rate forecasts in the two years horizon published by The Central Bank of Sweden in years 1999-2006. The studies are based on the Taylor-type instrument rule and forecast-based Taylor-type instrument rule. The methodology used is multiple linear regression models. The Central Bank of Sweden in years 1999-2006 implemented direct inflation forecast targeting (DIFT) rule. The decision making algorithm was based on the CPI inflation forecasts and rule of the thumb algorithm. The exact rule of the thumb was as follow: if the inflation forecast, in the two year forecast's horizon exceeded the inflation target by 1 p.p., then the central bank raised the repo rate by 0.4 p.p; if is below , then the central bank reduced the repo rate by 0.4 p.p. If the inflation forecast was equal to the inflation target, then the repo rate remained unchanged. The historical repo rates differ from the theoretical estimated rule of the thumb's repo rates by +/-0.28 p.p.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 6.7 percent in FY11, continuing the upward trend in growth after declining during FY06-09. This strong performance can be repeated in FY12 if exports continue to grow and if garment exports benefit from the agreement reached during the recent India-Bangladesh Summit, remittances continue to recover, and if investment is boosted by improved infrastructure services particularly power. Risks in the global economy can affect Bangladesh in several ways. The standard and poor (S&P) downgrade of US debt as well as the debt problems in the Euro Zone are affecting the international markets and renewing fears of another global slowdown. This time around, limited fiscal and monetary space in developed countries increases the chances of a protracted slowdown. If this slowdown occurs, it can affect Bangladesh's balance of payments through its impact on exports and remittances, put pressure on the exchange rate, increase economic uncertainty, and, in turn, weaken investment and growth. Domestic policies will also affect Bangladesh's economic prospects. A slow pace of reforms in the investment climate can affect domestic and foreign investment, as can inadequacies in energy supply and the poor quality of roads. The reversal of trade reforms as well as weakening of the financial sector can also affect export growth and investment. Expansionary macroeconomic policies could increase risks on the current account and make inflation management more difficult. Unlike in 2008, Bangladesh has insufficient policy space to cushion the impact of a second global slowdown through fiscal stimulus. packages and monetary easing. Rapid growth in subsidies, sustained high rate of growth of credit to the private sector as well as recourse to monetary financing of the fiscal deficit have led to the erosion of the fiscal and monetary policy space. Much improved fiscal and monetary discipline combined with stronger efforts to address the energy and infrastructure deficits will be critical for sustaining growth performance. Maintaining the long-established tradition of sound macroeconomic management will also be important.

In fiscal year 2010-11, India's economy has expanded at a rate close to that observed prior to the global financial crisis. However, growth in the second half of the year slowed, and the performance of industry and investment has been particularly disappointing. Despite some fiscal consolidation and monetary tightening, inflation has emerged as a serious concern because of its effects on the poor, who are usually less able to protect themselves against rising prices, and because of its dampening effects on long-term investment, which is sensitive to interest rate expectations. India's economic growth reached 8.5 percent, helped by a strong rebound of the agriculture sector because of good rains in the 2010 monsoon season against the near-drought conditions of 2009. On the external side, exports staged an extraordinary recovery and the current account deficit narrowed, while capital flows slowed driven by a pronounced decline in foreign direct investment. Foreign institutional investment remained robust, however, and external borrowing increased to compensate partially for the decline in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The rupee remained stable against the U.S. dollar but showed a small real appreciation against a 36-currency trade weighted index, and Reserve Bank of India foreign reserves increased to more than $310 billion. The central government budget deficit for FY2010-11 is estimated to have reached 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an important contraction from the widened fiscal stance of FY2009-10. Budget implementation benefited from higher-than-expected growth in nominal GDP and related higher tax intake; although the tax-to-GDP ratio is still significantly lower than in FY2007-08. The spending-to-GDP ratio, on the other hand, was reduced by 0.7 percent of GDP despite two supplementary demands for grants.

The outlook for FY2011 has changed since the last macroeconomic update in October 2010.1 While gross development product (GDP) growths is still projected to be around 6.2 percent in FY11, inflationary pressures have strengthened and the external position has weakened. Rising energy and food subsidies are placing a strain on the budget, but higher-than-anticipated revenues and lower-than-budgeted Annual Development Program expenditures leave sufficient fiscal space for the government to react to these pressures. Progress on reforms is mixed, with advances made on Value Added Tax reforms, efforts to tighten liquidity and setting up a framework for public-private partnership projects. Developments on telecommunication policy, the Anticorruption Commission, and policy responses to stock market volatility are a cause for concern. The growth outlook for FY12 remains good but there are risks that need to be contained. Short-term risks include rising food and fuel prices, deteriorating remittances, an increased reserve drawdown, a growing quasi-fiscal deficit, stock market volatility and its potential impact on the banking sector. Long-term risks include the inability to sufficiently alleviate power shortages, raise public investment, and remove bottlenecks for private investment.

Several programs have been introduced by US fiscal and monetary authorities in response to the financial crisis. We examine the responses involving Treasury debt - the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), the Supplemental Financing Program, increases in Treasury issuance, and open market operations - and their impacts on the overnight Treasury general collateral repo rate, a key money market rate. Our contribution is to consider each policy in light of the others, both to help guide policy responses to future crises and to emphasize policy interactions. Only the TSLF was designed to directly address stresses in short-term money markets by temporarily changing the supply of Treasury collateral in the marketplace. We find that the TSLF is uniquely effective relative to other policies and that, while changes in Treasury collateral do affect reporates, the impacts are not equivalent across sources of Treasury collateral.

India's economic performance in FY2009/10 shows that the recovery from the slowdown during the global financial crisis is well underway. India's Gross domestic Product (GDP) growth in FY2009/10 has beaten expectations by reaching 7.4 percent compared with 6.7 percent in the previous year. In particular, agricultural sector growth was better than feared with a slightly positive growth rate despite the worst monsoon shortfall in three decades. Strong growth in the fourth quarter pushed annual GDP growth to 7.4 percent in 2009-10. Fourth quarter growth reached 8.6 percent (y-o-y), the highest quarterly growth rate since the end of FY2007/08. The industrial sector's robust recovery beat expectations. Growth in the last quarter of fiscal year FY2009/10 was an unexpectedly high 13.3 percent resulting in over 12 percent growth in the second half of year, nearly double the 6 percent growth witnessed in the first half. Higher inflation mars the bright picture, but there are clear indications of moderation. Inflation as measured by the wholesale price index (WPI) averaged 10 percent during February-May 2010. India's recovery after the slowdown seems well underway. Growth is projected to climb to 8-9 percent in the next two years. These growth rates are achievable without a renewed build-up of inflationary pressure as long as agricultural growth returns to trend, infrastructure constraints are alleviated, and international prices remain stable. Over the next year, sources of growth will shift from fiscal stimulus to manufacturing and, possibly a recovering agriculture.

Repo markets are an essential component of liquid Government debt markets, acting as a transmission belt between money and debt markets, as well as serving to conduct key functions for the efficient operation of debt markets. These include, among others, credit risk management, funding debt portfolios, playing the yield curve, and covering short positions and settlement fails. The hybrid nature of a repo between a collateralized loan and a full transfer of ownership makes it a very versatile instrument for a broad range of market participants with very different business models. However, this is at the same time the reason for its complexity. This note addresses the legal, structural, accounting, tax, regulatory and infrastructure factors that are decisive for repo market development. The legal and infrastructure factors that underpin repo markets functionality are evolving ones and may be different depending on the country. The perspective adopted in this note intends to provide a balanced account of both the conceptual issues in each topic and relevant country cases, with the objective of providing policy makers with analytical tools to address their country specific context.