Puriya Abbassi Livres

The financial crisis has deeply affected money markets and thus, potentially, the proper functioning of the interest rate channel of monetary policy transmission. Therefore, we analyze the effectiveness of monetary policy in steering euro area money market rates looking at, first, the predictability of money market rates on the basis of monetary policy expectations, and second the impact of extraordinary central bank measures on money market rates. We find that during the crisis money market rates up to 12 months still respond to revisions in the expected path of future rates, even though to a lesser extent than before August 2007. We attribute part of the loss in monetary policy effectiveness to money market rates being driven by higher liquidity premia and increased uncertainty about future interest rates. Our results also indicate that the ECBs non-standard monetary policy measures as of October 2008 were effective in addressing the disruptions in the euro area money market. In fact, our estimates suggest that non-standard monetary policy measures helped to lower Euribor rates by more than 80 basis points. These findings show that central banks have effective tools at hand to conduct monetary policy in times of crises.

Using transaction-level data on foreign exchange (FX) forward contracts, we document large demand-driven heterogeneity in banks' dollar hedging costs. For identification, we exploit regulatory end-of-quarter reporting that penalizes banks' currency exposure with capital surcharges. Contracts that reduce quarter-end currency exposure trade at higher prices, specifically for banks with high dollar funding gaps and high leverage, while access to internal dollar capital markets and bargaining power reduces prices. Spreads between similar contracts with and without initial margin widen with leverage. Our results suggest that banks’ shadow costs of capital are important for the international propagation of shocks through FX derivatives markets.

We study the role of bargaining power and outside options for the pricing of over-the-counter interbank loans using a bilateral Nash bargaining model and test the model predictions with detailed transaction-level data from the euro-area interbank market. We find that lender banks with greater bargaining power over their borrowers charge higher interest rates, while the lack of alternative investment opportunities for lenders reduces bilateral interest rates. Moreover, we find that lenders that are not eligible to earn interest on excess reserves (IOER) lend funds below the IOER rate to borrowers with access to the IOER facility, which in turn put these funds in their reserve accounts to earn the spread. Our findings highlight that this persistent arbitrage opportunity is not a result of the mere lack of alternative outside options of some lenders, but it crucially depends on their limited bilateral bargaining power, leading to a persistent segmentation of prices in the euro interbank market. We examine the implications of these findings for the transmission of euro-area monetary policy

We analyze the relation between market-based credit risk interconnectedness among banks during the crisis and the associated balance sheet linkages via funding and securities holdings. For identification, we use a proprietary dataset that has the funding positions of banks at the bank-to-bank level for 2006-13 in conjunction with investments of banks at the security level and the credit register from Germany. We find asymmetries both cross-sectionally and over time: when banks face difficulties to raise funding, the interbank lending a↵ects market-based bank interconnectedness. Moreover, banks with investments in securities related to troubled classes have a higher credit risk interconnectedness. Overall, our results suggest that market-based measures of interdependence can serve well as risk monitoring tools in the absence of disaggregated high-frequency bank fundamental data.

We study the intraday interest rate in a CCP-based GC pooling repo market and its key determinants. Since collateral used in this market is identical to collateral eligible for the daylight overdraft facility of the Eurosystem, any intraday rate in this market cannot be a result of collateral constraints keeping banks from using the overdraft for arbitrage. Nevertheless, we find that in the crisis period a statistically and economically significant intraday spread (up to 60 basis points) prevailed that was only somewhat mitigated by the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy measures. Our results show that this spread was mainly determined by the market liquidity of the repo market, suggesting that the intraday spread is largely a liquidity premium.

We analyze securities trading by banks and the associated spillovers to the supply of credit. Empirical analysis has been elusive due to the lack of securities register for banks. We use a unique, proprietary dataset that has the investments of banks at the security level for 2005-2012 in conjunction with the credit register from Germany. Analyzing data at the security level for each bank in each period, we find that during the crisis, banks with higher trading expertise increase their overall investments in securities, especially in those that had a larger price drop. The quantitative effects are largest for trading-expertise banks with higher capital and in securities with lower rating and long-term maturity. In fact, there are no differential effects for triple-A rated securities. Moreover, banks with higher trading expertise reduce their overall supply of credit in crisis times – i. e., for the same borrower at the same time, trading-expertise banks reduce lending relative to other banks. This effect is more pronounced for trading-expertise banks with higher capital, and the credit reduction is binding at the firm level. Finally, these differential effects for trading-expertise banks are not present outside the crisis period.

We use a unique data set that comprises each banks bids in the Eurosystems main refinancing operations and its recourse to the LOLR facility (a) to derive banks willingness-to-pay for liquidity through a one-week repo and (b) to show that a banks willingness-to-pay is a good indicator for the probability that this bank draws on the LOLR facility. Our results suggest (i) that banks willingness-to-pay for liquidity indeed reflects refinancing conditions in the interbank market and (ii) that the willingness-to-pay can serve as an early warning indicator for banking distress.

The relation between the ECB's main refinancing (MRO) rates and the money market is key for the monetary transmission process in the euro area. This paper investigates how money market rates respond to the new information revealed by MRO auctions. Our results confirm a stabilizing level relationship between the overnight rate Eonia and MRO rates before the financial crisis. Since the start of the financial crisis, however, we find that MRO auction outcomes even exacerbated the disconnection of money market rates from the policy-intended interest rate level. These findings support the fixed rate full allotment policy introduced by the ECB as an unconventionalmeasure to re-stabilize banks' refinancing conditions. -- Financial Crisis ; Monetary transmission process ; Central bank auctions ; European Central Bank ; Money markets