November 21, 2002
Staff research, Publications
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November 21, 2002
Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2002
Cover page
Business College Currency
The artifacts pictured on the cover form part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.
Photographed by Gord Carter, Ottawa
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November 20, 2002
CLS Bank: Managing Foreign Exchange Settlement Risk
In the foreign exchange market, where average daily turnover is in trillions of dollars and trades span time zones, legal systems, and domestic payments systems, participants take on various risks. The most serious risk is credit risk—the risk that one party will fail to pay. Central banks, private sector financial institutions, and domestic payments systems operators laboured for more than a decade to develop a multi-currency settlement system to deal with these risks. The result, the CLS Bank, began operations in September 2002. It virtually eliminates the credit risk inherent in foreign exchange transactions by providing a payment-versus-payment arrangement for settlement. The CLS Bank is regulated by the Federal Reserve Board in consultation with the central banks that have currencies settling through its system. At present there are seven currencies, including the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Canada acts as banker for the CLS Bank, providing it with a settlement account and making and receiving payments on its behalf through the Large Value Transfer System. With the participation and support of the world's largest foreign-exchange-dealing institutions, and growing membership, the CLS Bank has the potential to become the dominant global mechanism for settling foreign exchange transactions. -
November 19, 2002
Purchasing-Power Parity: Definition, Measurement, and Interpretation
This article examines the concept of purchasing-power parity (PPP) and its implications for the equilibrium value of the Canadian exchange rate. PPP has two main applications, as a theory of exchange rate determination and as a means to compare living standards across countries. Concerning exchange rate determination, PPP is mainly useful as a reminder that monetary policy has no long-run impact on the real exchange rate, since the exchange rate can deviate persistently from its PPP value in response to real shocks. To compare living standards across countries, PPP exchange rates constructed by comparing the prices of national consumption baskets are used to translate per capita national incomes into a common currency. These rates are useful because they offset differences in national price levels to obtain comparable measures of purchasing power, but they are not an accurate measure of the equilibrium value of the exchange rate. The authors conclude that the current deviation of the Canadian exchange rate from the PPP rate does not imply that the exchange rate is undervalued, but that this deviation reflects the impact of persistent real factors, in particular, lower commodity prices. -
Alternative Public Spending Rules and Output Volatility
One of the central lessons learned from the Great Depression was that adjusting government spending each year to balance the budget increases the volatility of output. -
An Eclectic Approach to Estimating U.S. Potential GDP
The authors describe the principal results obtained from a new method applied to the estimation of potential U.S. GDP. -
The Impact of Common Currencies on Financial Markets: A Literature Review and Evidence from the Euro Area
This paper reviews both the theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of common currencies on financial markets and evaluates the first three years of experience with Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). -
How Do Canadian Banks That Deal in Foreign Exchange Hedge Their Exposure to Risk?
This paper examines the daily hedging and risk-management practices of financial intermediaries in the Canadian foreign exchange (FX) market. -
Alternative Trading Systems: Does One Shoe Fit All?
This paper examines the factors that lead liquidity-motivated investors to choose the type of market structure they prefer. -
Labour Markets, Liquidity, and Monetary Policy Regimes
We develop an equilibrium model of the monetary policy transmission mechanism that highlights information frictions in the market for money and search frictions in the market for labour.