Federal Reserve discount window lending (restricted access)

Confidential supervisory data: not exercised here

Contemporaneous discount window borrower data is confidential and held by the Federal Reserve. It carries no provenance badge because there is no contemporaneous access path we can run here. Under Dodd-Frank, transaction-level details are released to the public only after a roughly two-year lag; the contemporaneous, borrower-identified data is restricted to a Federal Reserve affiliation or an approved restricted-data arrangement, inside a secure environment, with output subject to disclosure review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

Federal Reserve discount window lending records are the loan-level details of borrowing at the Fed’s discount window (primary credit, secondary credit, seasonal credit, and, in stress periods, related emergency facilities): which institution borrowed, how much, at what rate, and for how long. Borrowing is historically stigmatized, so the identity of contemporaneous borrowers is sensitive and protected. A paper we distill uses it: Kotidis & Schreft use discount window borrowing records to measure whether banks exposed to a cyberattack increase their probability of borrowing from the window.

• Cost: not for sale contemporaneously. Lagged transaction details are released publicly under Dodd-Frank.
• Source: Federal Reserve (discount window lending).
• Coverage: institutions that borrow at the window; loan-level terms. Most banks do not borrow in normal times, so usage is sparse outside stress periods.

Access (restricted)

• Lagged release is public; contemporaneous borrower data is not. Dodd-Frank requires the Fed to disclose discount window transaction details after about two years; the contemporaneous, borrower-identified data is confidential until then.
• Through a Federal Reserve affiliation or approved program. Contemporaneous loan-level access is limited to researchers at the Federal Reserve System or others granted entry to the restricted data, worked inside a secure environment with output subject to disclosure review.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• Usage is sparse and stigma-driven. Most banks never borrow in normal times; borrowing spikes in stress. The data is a selected, episodic signal, not a continuous panel, and the decision to borrow is itself informative (stigma).
• The two-year lag shapes what is usable contemporaneously. For recent periods only the restricted data exists; the public lagged release is unavailable for the most recent two years. Match your access route to your sample window.
• Facility heterogeneity. Primary, secondary, and seasonal credit, plus crisis facilities, have different terms, eligibility, and meaning; pooling them conflates very different borrowing. Separate by facility.
• Borrowing is an outcome, not an exposure. Whether a bank borrows is an endogenous response to its condition; treating window use as exogenous mismeasures causality. Be explicit about identification.
• Mapping to bank identifiers. Borrowers must be linked to RSSD IDs and other bank data; mergers break the link over time. Verify the crosswalk.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Contemporaneous loan-level results leave the secure environment only after review.

Citation

Cite the source, e.g.: Federal Reserve discount window lending records, confidential; accessed under restricted-data arrangement, YYYY-MM-DD (or the public Dodd-Frank lagged release for older periods). State the facility, the sample window, and whether contemporaneous or lagged data was used.