The Federal Reserve has proposed a change in its method of administering the discount window. This paper looks at the effects of this proposal on monetary control and on the money markets, assuming that banks base their behavior on profit maximization over the long run. First, the reserve supply process is postulated. The conditions under which borrowing from the Federal Reserve will improve or reduce monetary control are stated. Second, the primary reserve adjustment process is formulated to show how primary reserve adjustment can affect rates in the money market. Finally arguments are set forth to show how borrowed reserves would behave if commercial banks are attempting to maximize long run profits and under the discount window administration proposed by the Federal Reserve Committee. The conclusion is that borrowed reserves will behave to reduce money market instability but at the same time they will behave to reduce the Federal Reserve control over the stock of Reserves available to the banking system. Borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank can be expected to behave in a way of offset Federal Reserve open market operations.

Share repurchases reached a decade-high level in 2019, just as US equity indices reached a historical zenith, a move in tandem that supports more than merely a correlative relation. However, this relationship moves beyond that of just a close tandem move in indices alongside share repurchases, but to the behavior of firms which began to leverage themselves in order to promote the evermore profitable strategy of large buyback programs. Those repurchases indicate an idiosyncratic and procyclical leveraging that, while much smaller in scope and less combustible by lack of derivative amplification, led to the gorging on unsustainable debt described by Hyman Minsky and experienced in the Great Financial Crisis in the banking industry. In this case, the 'Minsky moment' that may have inevitably popped the self-promotion bubble came in the form of the 'black swan' event of the coronavirus outbreak. This paper aims to historically frame the issues, with delimitation of the effect of buybacks from 2009 to early 2020 with scant reference to historical factors influencing the increased usage of share repurchase programs. The analysis within this historical scope will reflect empirical measures on the market-wide level of share buybacks and debt levels alongside the concurrent equity index acceleration....

The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) acted in an unprecedented fashion to drive interest rates aggressively and creatively to the zero lower bound (ZLB) and employed other unconventional monetary policy (UMP) tools to provide stimulus to the U.S. economy during the financial crisis and the subsequent extended recovery period. However, despite these innovative policy tools, the U.S. economy realized a historically weak recovery. The unconventional monetary policy tools, including the expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by purchasing longer dated securities, paying interest on reserves, and providing forward guidance, structurally changed the conduct and implementation of monetary policy from the post-WWII experience. Significant research has been developed that describes and analyzes the impact and effectiveness of this experiment in using unconventional monetary policy tools to stimulate the economy. However, very little research has been conducted that studies the response of various economic actors to the Fed’s reversal of these emergency measures as it sought to rein in a potentially overheated economy or counter incipient inflation. When the Fed methodically raised interest rates from 2015 until the end of 2018 investment spending, as indicated by private nonresidential investment spending, did not slow as expected according to mainstream economics or as evident in prior periods of monetary tightening. This anomaly should also be evident in measures at the firm level as firm investment outlays comprise the bulk of the GDP reported private nonresidential investment spending. This research study determined that firm level investment spending, as represented by the growth of total assets, did not respond negatively to the Federal Reserve’s actions that raised interest rates. Other factors such as the general improvement in GDP growth, improved business confidence in the national economy, and greater optimism of near-term firm prospects explain to a far greater degree the growth in total assets compared to Fed activity. Effectively, factors contributing to improved business confidence overwhelmed the Federal Reserve’s intention to slow investment growth by raising interest rates. This research supports the Bernanke et al. (2019) proposal and Hebden and López-Salido’s (2018) research that indicate a stimulative monetary policy when rates are constrained by the effective lower bound and characterized by a lower for longer (L4L) monetary posture results in better output and inflation outcomes. Further, this research offers empirical evidence of Bernanke’s caution that although L4L results in better outcomes, there is a potential for output and/or inflation overshoot forcing the Federal Reserve to abruptly reverse policy stance, a scenario played out by the Federal Reserve soon after it stopped tightening at the end of 2018. The results here expand the work completed by Khan and Upadhayaya (2018), and Konstantinou and Tagkalakis (2011) that business confidence has a significant influence on business investment spending by analyzing the response of business decision makers during an unprecedented time as the Federal Reserve removed emergency measures and turned to a tightening regime. / Business Administration/Interdisciplinary

Quantitative Easing is an unconventional instrument when conducting monetary policy with the aim of stimulating the economy. The instrument is a complementary tool when changing the nominal interest rate is no longer effective. In the United States this unconventional instrument has been used through three different waves between December 2008 to October 2014. This research paper investigates two different regressions, one for the dependent variable consumption and one for the dependent variable investments to capture the effects on households and firms respectively. The results are used to study whether the unconventional monetary policy has had any effects on these variables and if the dependent variables are affected to different degrees. Data for this paper is collected between the first quarter of 2005 until the fourth quarter of 2019. The modelling used is the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) for the two different regressions. All variables in the regressions are critically tested for unit roots, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity and misspecification to validate the analysis. The findings of our ARDL models indicate that investments are affected by quantitative easing to a larger degree than consumption by 3.8 times the change of the coefficients at its optimal lags.

No description available.

This study analyzes the empirical evidence of a political monetary cycle in Federal Reserve policy instruments and indicators, such as the discount rate and the monetary base. The theoretical predictions of a four year presidential election cycle are tested with seasonal adjustment indices, which provide a measure of the seasonal component of these time series. It was found that Democratic presidential terms are characterized by a six month stimulation of borrowing, engineered through a reduced discount rate in the election year. The pre-election stimulation in Republican presidential terms begins in the pre-election year. This allows for the short-run effect on Ml, as well as lagged effects on GNP. The seasonal adjustment indices for the monetary base growth rate show stimulative strategies for both political parties. The finding is that both parties show a lower variance in the monetary base growth rate in the pre-election year for both congressional and presidential elections. / M.A.

The Federal Reserve System is a complex central bank system which determines the money supply and the level of interest rates. The System was established in 1913 as a monetary authority primarily concerned with maintaining an elastic reserve system which would act as a check on bank runs and money panics. Since 1913, Congress has provided the System with monetary tools enabling it to quickly respond to adverse conditions affecting dollar stability and economic growth. All indicators point to an increase in monetary power by the Federal Reserve System simply because economic growth, national and worldwide, calls for more complex monetary mechanics. Representative Wright Patman (Democrat, Texas) is afraid of the powerful Reserve System. He would like to strip the agency of its power and reduce it to a routine operation with policy decisions made by the Administration. He charges the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System with manipulating the money supply and raising the interest rates for the benefit of bankers of the East. In my thesis, The Independent Status of the Federal Reserve System, I evaluated Mr. Patman's criticisms and his recommended reforms of the System. I have concluded that a continuation of the status of the Federal Reserve System is necessary. Mr. Patman's suggested reforms would invite political interference in monetary affairs and expose the character of our dollar to abuse. / Master of Science

There has been a growing interest in economic policies and their impact within a country among the real estate economics research community in recent years. After the economic crisis of 2008, an unconventional monetary policy was created, and it has been called quantitative easing (QE), an instrument of economic policy applied through central banks to boost the economy in periods when conventional monetary policy is not satisfactory. As with the economic challenge brought by COVID-19, many central banks had to implement unconventional monetary plans. This thesis aims to discover the impact of quantitative easing (QE) and its opposite quantitative tapering (QT) on the housing prices of the US real estate market. In order to deal with this problem, this research performs time-varying rolling correlations, which are correlations between two-time series on a rolling window. The window for this research will be monthly and subject to historical data points from a 280-month period of the USA metropolitan price housing and the Federal Balance sheet between 1998 and 2022. The results show there is a positive correlation between the different US housing markets and the US Federal Balance Sheet in the majority of the US markets analyzed and finds a high positive correlation between the different regional house price indices and US National Home Price Index and finally the existence of spillover effect between the cities in the high tier (e.g., Los Angeles and Miami) and low-tier (e.g., Chicago and Atlanta) cities, such that rising trends in one city are mirrored by the following changes in the other city in the equivalent tier and vice versa. / Under de senaste åren har det funnits ett växande intresse för ekonomisk politik och dess inverkan inom ett land bland den fastighetsekonomiska forskarvärlden. Efter den ekonomiska krisen 2008 har en okonventionell penningpolitik skapats och den har kallats kvantitativa lättnader (QE); ett ekonomiskt politiskt instrument som tillämpas genom centralbanker för att stärka ekonomin i perioder då den konventionella penningpolitiken inte är tillfredsställande. Liksom i fallet med den ekonomiska utmaning som covid-19 orsakade, var många centralbanker tvungna att genomföra okonventionella monetära planer. Denna avhandling syftar till att upptäcka effekten av kvantitativ lättnad (QE) och dess motståndare kvantitativ nedtrappning (QT) på bostadspriserna på den amerikanska fastighetsmarknaden. Som ett sätt att hantera detta problem utför denna forskning tidsvarierande rullande korrelationer som är korrelationer mellan två tidsserier på ett rullande fönster, fönstret för denna forskning kommer att vara månadsvis och föremål för historiska datapunkter från 280-månadersperioden i USA storstadspriserna bostäder och den federala balansräkningen mellan 1998 och 2022. Resultaten visar att det finns en positiv korrelation mellan de olika amerikanska bostadsmarknaderna och den amerikanska federala balansräkningen på majoriteten av de analyserade amerikanska marknaderna och finner en hög positiv korrelation mellan de olika regionala husprisindex och US National Home Price Index och slutligen förekomsten av spridningseffekter mellan städerna i städerna på hög nivå (t.ex. Los Angeles och Miami) och lågnivå (t.ex. Chicago och Atlanta), så att stigande trender i en stad speglas av följande förändringar i den andra staden i motsvarande nivå och vice versa.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / William F. Blankenau / The financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has greatly tested the abilities of central banks to counter financial instability and economic slowdown through traditional monetary policy. This paper will examine in detail the monetary response of both the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States (Fed) and the Bank of England to the turmoil in the financial markets. The Bank of England, which adopted inflation targeting after the Black Wednesday crisis in 1992, and the Fed, which has no such stated policy, allows us to compare two different monetary regimes in the aftermath of a crisis. To counter the financial crisis the Bank of England resorted to unconventional monetary policies that included expansion of liquidity easing operations and a policy of quantitative easing through purchase of debt securities. The Fed also made use of both traditional tools as well as more innovative measures to combat liquidity concerns in the financial market. A multitude of new programs was initiated by the Fed to supply liquidity to susceptible lending institutions and lower the spreads on commercial loans and securities. Overall, we find that the actions of the Bank of England and the Fed were effective in restoring stability to financial markets and preventing a prolonged economic depression. Further, the Bank of England's inflation targeting framework did not hinder its ability to respond to the crisis and there was no major divergence in the policy actions of the two central banks.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Lance J. Bachmeier / This thesis examines the properties of two short-term interest rates: the federal funds rate and the rate of return on 90-day Treasury securities (T-Bills). Findings indicate strong evidence of cointegration among the two series. This result leads us to consider whether future movements in T-bill returns are predictable using the same methods used to predict the target federal funds rate. The “Taylor Rule,” introduced by Taylor (1993), assumes the Federal Reserve considers inflation and the output gap in their deliberation of how to adjust the federal funds target rate. We do an in-sample analysis followed by an out-of-sample forecasting comparison. Findings show that, in addition to inflation and the output gap, the unemployment rate and stock market contain valuable information for forecasting future T-bill rates.