EconReporter

Federal Reserve decided to cut rate by an supersized 0.5 percentage point. The decision finally ended the weeks-long market debate of whether the central bank would cut 25 or 50 basis points. One important thing, though, didn't reach the headline: The Fed has never been this "confused" about where the natural rate should be.

A spread of over 3.5 percentage points between US and Hong Kong Interest rate persisted for close to two months and so far arbitrage has failed to close the gap, leading to discussion of whether Hong Kong's Linked Exchange System is failing. This article, however, will explore some technical factors behind this interesting interest rate gap.

The Swiss sovereign-money referendum, also known as the Sovereign-Money Initiative, which aims to creates a safe and crisis-free, yet experimental, banking system in Switzerland will be held on 10th June.

A story about three economists agree with the prevailing consensus that the Phillips Curve of the US is flattened in the last few decades on the one hand; and dispute the idea that the Phillips Curve is dead on the other.

In the latest BIS Quarterly Review, researchers Ryan Banerjee and Boris Hofmann consolidated some of the earlier research to illustrate the problem of zombie firms. They argued that the rise of zombies predated the 2008 financial crisis, and has since been dragging down the productivity of the real economy.

"The [Standing Repo Facility (SRF)] rate is set at the top of the FOMC’s target range for the federal funds rate. This combination of an ample supply of reserves and an SRF rate at the top of the target range reduces the day-to-day reliance on the facility except during periods of significant upward pressure on rates resulting from strong liquidity demand or market stress," said John Williams

In a recent study "Bank Equity and Banking Crises" by Matthew Baron (of Cornell University), Emil Verner (MIT Sloan), and Wei Xiong (Princeton University), the three economists developed a comprehensive database of bank equity prices and banking crises with a full-sample of 46 countries from 1870-2016. They try to understand the dynamic between bank equity decline and banking crises.

George Akerlof explains how the Keynesian- neoclassical synthesis dominated the field, and what problems this dominance resulted.

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday decided to hold policy rate at 2.25% unchanged, as expected by markets. However, what is a notable is the Bank continues to show dovish bias given the recent rebound in economic data. 

Ricardo Reis, economics professor at the London School of Economics, explained that there were telling signs that the increase in cost of living started ealry-2021 was not a "transitory" phenomenon.