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Using quarterly US Call Report data from 2001 to 2024, this paper shows that retail-franchise banks can hold thin reserve buffers even in an ample-reserves regime. In 2024:Q4, 39.2 percent of banks and 10.4 percent of deposits sit below the historical ten percent top-tranche benchmark, so aggregate abundance is not a sufficient statistic for reserve-policy incidence.

This project studies whether the Federal Reserve’s 2020 elimination of reserve requirements changed bank balance-sheet allocation and lending.