The Term Auction Facility (TAF), the first auction-based liquidity initiative by the Federal Reserve during the global financial crisis, was aimed at improving conditions in the dollar money market and bringing down the significantly elevated London interbank offered rate (Libor). The effectiveness of this innovative policy tool is crucial for understanding the role of the central bank in financial stability, but academic studies disagree on the empirical evidence of the TAF effect on Libor. We show that the disagreement arises from mis-specifications of econometric models. Regressions using the daily level of the Libor-OIS spread as the dependent variable miss either the permanent or temporary TAF effect, depending on whether the dummy variable indicates the events of the TAF or the regimes before and after an TAF event. Those regressions also suffer from the unit-root problem and produce unreliable test statistics. By contrast, regressions using the daily change in the Libor-OIS spread are robust to the persistence of the TAF effect and the unit-root problem, consistently producing reliable evidence that the downward shifts of the Libor-OIS spread were associated with the TAF. The evidence indicates the efficacy of the TAF in helping the interbank market to relieve liquidity strains.

We examine whether U.S. banks subject to the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) reduce lending (an unintended consequence) and/or become more resilient to liquidity shocks, as intended by regulators. We find that LCR banks tighten lending standards, and reduce liquidity creation that occurs mainly through lower lending relative to non-LCR banks. However, covered banks also contribute less to fire-sale externalities relative to exempt banks. For LCR banks, we estimate that the total after-tax benefits of reduced fire-sale risk (net of the costs associated with foregone lending) exceed $50 billion from 2013Q2 to 2017, mostly accruing to the largest LCR banks. Non-LCR regulations enacted during our sample period cannot fully account for these findings. For the banking sector as a whole, lending migrates to smaller, non-LCR banks so that lending shares increase but fire-sale risk does not decrease. Our results highlight the trade-off between liquidity creation and resiliency arising from liquidity regulations that underlie the debate on whether the LCR should be extended following the banking crisis of March 2023.