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Institutional research & analysis

Source: BIS

INSTITUTIONAL

Working PaperJune 11, 2026

The anatomy of stablecoin transactions

Stablecoin transfers are often interpreted as payments. On programmable blockchains, however, they are frequently embedded in atomically executed transaction bundles that combine trading, lending, arbitrage, liquidity provision, and settlement. We show that ignoring this structure materially distorts the interpretation of stablecoin activity. Using 593 million event logs from 141 million Ethereum transactions involving three major U.S. dollar stablecoins, we develop a replicable framework to ...

BIS1 min read
Research PaperJune 11, 2026

Strengthening the going-concern role of AT1: options and trade-offs

Additional Tier 1 (AT1) instruments are designed to operate as going-concern capital. In instances where the issuer reaches the point of non-viability, these instruments also support an orderly resolution of a gone concern. Nonetheless, in practice, the effectiveness of AT1 Instruments in fulfilling their primary role as going-concern capital is undermined by low trigger thresholds, the discretionary nature of activation and insufficient incentives for recapitalisation.

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Research PaperJune 3, 2026

Global pension asset allocations and debt markets

The pensions sector is an important investor group in global financial markets and a key holder of government and corporate debt. This paper examines the evolution of pension fund asset allocations around the globe and documents important structural changes. Over time, pension investors have shifted from fixed income securities to mutual fund shares. In the meantime, they have also reallocated from traditional investments into alternative investments. Evidence from US pensions suggests that t...

BIS1 min read
Working PaperMay 28, 2026

The strength of the inflation-output link in China

We systematically investigate the relationship between China's inflation, economic slack, and expectations through the lens of New Keynesian Phillips Curves (NKPC). Extending existing research, we employ inflation expectations from Consensus Economics over recent samples and assess the stability of the estimates. Despite China's unique and evolving institutions, NKPC estimates are stable and show significant roles for both the output gap and inflation expectations in contrast to previous find...

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Working PaperMay 27, 2026

Liquidity regulation and bank funding costs

We establish a causal link between liquidity regulation and a lower cost of bank wholesale funding. For identification, we use pre-determined variation in banks' liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) in a difference-in-differences setup. Granular instrument-level data allow us to carefully control for any observable and unobservable time-varying factors at the creditor, instrument type, and macroeconomic levels. We find that banks with greater LCR exposure see a steeper decline in their wholesale fu...

BIS1 min read