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BigTech Lending as a New Form of Financial Intermediation

Jon Frost, Leonardo Gambacorta, Yi Huang, Hyun Song Shin, Pablo Zbinden, Jun 19, 2019

BigTech firms, i.e. large technology firms whose primary business is digital services, are entering finance. Their entry into finance started with payments. Increasingly, they have expanded beyond payments into the provision of credit, insurance, and toward savings products, either directly or in partnership with incumbent financial institutions...

Dollar Appreciation and Asian Economies

Zheng Liu, Mark M. Spiegel, Andrew Tai, Jun 20, 2017

The sharp appreciation of the U.S. dollar between mid-2014 and mid-2015 raised concerns in the U.S. and its major trading partners. Zheng Liu, Mark Spiegel, and Andrew Tai from the San Francisco Fed evaluate the impact of dollar appreciation on economic conditions in the United States and its three major Asian trading partners: South Korea, Japan, and China.

Leverage-Induced Fire Sales and Stock Market Crashes

Jiangze Bian, Zhiguo He, Kelly Shue, Hao Zhou, Dec 03, 2018

The authors find that margin investors heavily sell their holdings when their account-level leverage edges toward the maximum leverage limits. Stocks that are disproportionately held by accounts close to leverage limits experience high selling pressure and abnormal price declines that subsequently reverse over the next 40 trading days. Unregulated shadow-financed margin accounts contributed more to the market crash even though these shadow accounts had higher leverage limits and held a smaller fraction of market assets.

An Empirical Overview of Chinese Capital Market

Grace Xing Hu, Jun Pan, Jiang Wang, Jun 29, 2022

We provide an empirical review of the Chinese capital market, focusing on the basic return and risk characteristics of its major asset classes, as well as a comparison to the US market. All major asset classes in China have significant higher volatilities than their counterparts in the US market, but they do not always yield larger returns. Small-company stocks, short-, medium-, and long-term treasury bonds outperform their US counterparts, while large stocks underperform and long-term enterprise bonds yield similar returns.

The Demand for Reverse Mortgages in China

Katja Hanewald, Hazel Bateman, Hanming Fang, Shang Wu, May 15, 2019

Reverse mortgages are financial products that allow older homeowners to live in their property and receive income for as long as they live; repayment is made from the proceeds of the property sales upon the homeowners’ death. A recent pilot program in China by Happy Life Insurance found almost no takeup of such products. We investigate whether, if reverse...