Financial markets

• December 24, 2004

  Government of Canada Yield-Curve Dynamics, 1986-2003

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2004-2005 Grahame Johnson

  A database of historical Government of Canada zero-coupon yield curves developed at the Bank of Canada is introduced in this article, which also includes an initial statistical analysis of the behaviour and evolution of the zero-coupon interest (spot) rates over the full period and two distinct subperiods. Specific areas of interest include the evolution of the levels of key interest rates and yield-curve measures over the sample as well as daily changes in the key interest rates and the yield-curve measures; the identification of a relatively small number of factors that drove the evolution of the yield curve; and the total returns that would have been realized by holding bonds of different maturities for a given holding period.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Debt management, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets

• Trade Credit and Credit Rationing in Canadian Firms

  Staff Working Paper 2004-49 Rose Cunningham

  Burkart and Ellingsen's (2004) model of trade credit and bank credit rationing predicts that trade credit will be used by medium-wealth and low-wealth firms to help ease bank credit rationing.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G14, G2, G21, G3, G32

• An Empirical Analysis of the Canadian Term Structure of Zero-Coupon Interest Rates

  Staff Working Paper 2004-48 David Bolder, Adam Metzler, Grahame Johnson

  Zero-coupon interest rates are the fundamental building block of fixed-income mathematics, and as such have an extensive number of applications in both finance and economics.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): C, C0, C6, E, E4, G, G1

• The Monetary Origins of Asymmetric Information in International Equity Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2004-47 Gregory Bauer, Clara Vega

  Existing studies using low-frequency data show that macroeconomic shocks contribute little to international stock market covariation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): F, F3, F30, G, G1, G12, G14, G15

• Modelling the Evolution of Credit Spreads in the United States

  Staff Working Paper 2004-45 Stuart Turnbull, Jun Yang

  The authors use Jarrow and Turnbull's (1995) reduced-form methodology to model the evolution of the term structure of interest rates in the United States for different credit classes and different industries.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13