A New Daily Federal Funds Rate Series and History of the Federal Funds Market, 1928-1954

Sriya Anbil, Mark Carlson, Christopher Hanes and David Wheelock
Additional contact information
Sriya Anbil: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/sriya-l-anbil.htm

No 2020-016, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: This article describes the origins and development of the federal funds market from its inception in the 1920s to the early 1950s. We present a newly digitized daily data series on the federal funds rate that covers the period from April 1928 through June 1954. We compare the behavior of the funds rate with other money market interest rates and the Federal Reserve discount rate. Our federal funds rate series will enhance the ability of researchers to study an eventful period in U.S. financial history and to better understand how monetary policy was transmitted to banking and financial markets. For the 1920s and 1930s, our series is the best available measure of the overnight risk-free interest rate, better than the call money rate which many studies have used for that purpose. For the 1940s-1950s, our series provides new information about the transition away from wartime interest-rate pegs culminating in the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord.

Keywords: money markets; Federal Reserve System; federal funds rates; call loan rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E43 E44 E52 G21 N22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2020-06-26, Revised 2020-07-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2020/2020-016.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A New Daily Federal Funds Rate Series and History of the Federal Funds Market, 1928-1954 (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlwp:88239

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

DOI: 10.20955/wp.2020.016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().