The Great Escape? A Quantitative Evaluation of the Fed's Liquidity Facilities

We introduce liquidity frictions into an otherwise standard DSGE model with nominal and real rigidities and ask: can a shock to the liquidity of private paper lead to a collapse in short-term nominal interest rates and a recession like the one associated with the 2008 US financial crisis? Once the nominal interest rate reaches the zero bound, what are the effects of interventions in which the government provides liquidity in exchange for illiquid private paper? We find that the effects of the liquidity shock can be large, and show some numerical examples in which the liquidity facilities of the Federal Reserve prevented a repeat of the Great Depression in the period 2008–2009. (JEL E13, E31, E43, E44, E52, E58, G01)

Imperfect Competition in the Interbank Market for Liquidity as a Rationale for Central Banking

We study interbank lending and asset sales markets in which banks with surplus liquidity have market power vis-à-vis banks needing liquidity, frictions arise in lending due to moral hazard, and assets are bank-specific. Surplus banks ration lending and instead purchase assets from needy banks, an inefficiency more acute during financial crises. A central bank acting as a lender-of-last-resort can ameliorate this inefficiency provided it is prepared to extend potentially loss-making loans or is better informed than outside markets, as might be the case if it also performs a supervisory role. This rationale for central banking finds support in historical episodes. (JEL E58, G01, G21, G28, L13, N21)