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Interest on Reserves and Arbitrage in Post-Crisis Money Markets

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Abstract

Currently, Eurodollars and fed funds markets combined trade about $220 billion in funds daily, the vast majority of which with overnight tenor. In this paper, we document several features of these wholesale unsecured dollar funding markets. Using daily confidential data on wholesale unsecured borrowing and reserve balances, we show that foreign banks, which make up most of the trading volumes in these markets, keep around 99% of each additional Eurodollar and 80% of each fed fund borrowed as reserve balances. With these risk-free trades, banks earn the spread between interest on reserves and the borrowing rate. Relative to foreign banks, large domestic institutions borrow less often, but when they do, they keep around 99% of each additional Eurodollar or fed fund raised as reserves. Small domestic banks do not display any correlation between net borrowing and their reserves accumulation. We also discuss how regulatory costs affect trading patterns and interest rate differentials in wholesale dollar funding markets.

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  • Thomas Keating & Marco Macchiavelli, 2017. "Interest on Reserves and Arbitrage in Post-Crisis Money Markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-124, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2017-124
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2017.124
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Todd Keister & James J. McAndrews, 2009. "Why are banks holding so many excess reserves?," Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 15(Dec).
    2. Morten L. Bech & Antoine Martin & James J. McAndrews, 2012. "Settlement liquidity and monetary policy implementation—lessons from the financial crisis," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 18(Mar), pages 3-20.
    3. Benjamin Munyan, 2015. "Regulatory Arbitrage in the Repo Market," Working Papers 15-22, Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury.
    4. Jane E. Ihrig & Ellen E. Meade & Gretchen C. Weinbach, 2015. "Rewriting Monetary Policy 101: What's the Fed's Preferred Post-Crisis Approach to Raising Interest Rates?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 177-198, Fall.
    5. Bech, Morten L. & Klee, Elizabeth, 2011. "The mechanics of a graceful exit: Interest on reserves and segmentation in the federal funds market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(5), pages 415-431.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marco Macchiavelli & Luke Pettit, 2018. "Liquidity Regulation and Financial Intermediaries," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-084, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Thanassoulis, John & Erten, Irem & Neamtu, Ioana, 2022. "The Ring-Fencing Bonus," CEPR Discussion Papers 17625, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Erten, Irem & Neamtu, Ioana & Thanassoulis, John, 2023. "The ring-fencing bonus," Bank of England working papers 999, Bank of England.
    4. Andreas Schrimpf & Vladyslav Sushko, 2019. "Beyond LIBOR: a primer on the new benchmark rates," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    5. James A. Clouse & Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, 2018. "A Sequential Bargaining Model of the Fed Funds Market with Excess Reserves," Working Paper Series WP-2018-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    6. Jordan, Jerry L. & Luther, William J., 2022. "Central bank independence and the Federal Reserve's new operating regime," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 510-515.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Arbitrage; Eurodollars; Fed funds; Interest on reserves; Monetary policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

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