Why is an inverted yield-curve slope such a powerful predictor of future recessions? We show that a decomposition of the yield curve slope into its expectations and risk premia components helps disentangle the channels that connect fluctuations in Treasury rates and the future state of the...

Why does the short-term slope of the yield curve predict recessions? We explore the economic forces underlying Treasury yields' fluctuations and highlight the roles of a tight monetary policy stance and expectations of lower inflation in predicting downturns. While the monetary policy stance is...

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic response of stock market volatility to changes in monetary policy. Using a vector autoregressive model, our findings reveal a significant and asymmetric response of stock returns and volatility to monetary policy shocks. Although the increase in the...

The Federal Reserve's quantitative easing is presented as injecting $600 billion into the economy. But instead of getting banks lending to Americans again - households and firms - the money is going abroad, through arbitrage interest-rate speculation, currency speculation, and capital flight. No...

Assets have "indirect liquidity" if they cannot be used as media of exchange, but can be traded to obtain a medium of exchange (money) and thereby inherit monetary properties. This essay describes a simple dynamic model of indirect asset liquidity, provides closed form solutions for real and...

How many interest rate hikes is quantitative tightening (QT) equivalent to? In this paper, I examine this question based on the preferred-habitat model in Vayanos and Vila (2021). I define the equivalence between rate hikes and QT such that they both have the same impact on the 10-year yield....

Progress on the question of whether policymakers should respond directly to financial variables requires a realistic economic model that captures the links between asset prices, credit expansion, and real economic activity. Standard DSGE models with fully-rational expectations have difficulty...

Based on high-frequency data for Norway and Sweden, we investigate to what extent explicit forward guidance from monetary policy makers, by means of publishing the path of expected future policy rates, affects the market yield curve. We summarise movements in the yield curve by two latent...

In this paper we study financial spillovers from the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy and communication, and whether they have consequences for the effectiveness of domestic monetary policy of small open economies. Recent work suggests that the "trilemma" in international economics...