Staff research

• Macroeconomic Disasters and Consumption Smoothing: International Evidence from Historical Data

  Staff Working Paper 2023-4 Lorenzo Pozzi, Barbara Sadaba

  Does consumption smoothing fundamentally decrease during macroeconomic disasters? This paper uses a large historical dataset (1870–2016) for 16 industrial economies to show that during macroeconomic disasters (e.g., wars, pandemics, depressions) aggregate consumption and income are significantly less decoupled than during normal times.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, E, E2, E21

• Mandatory Retention Rules and Bank Risk

  Staff Working Paper 2023-3 Yuteng Cheng

  This paper studies, theoretically and empirically, the unintended consequences of mandatory retention rules in securitization. It proposes a novel model showing that while retention strengthens monitoring, it may also encourage banks to shift risk.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit risk management, Financial institutions, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): G, G2, G21, G28

• Geographical and Cultural Proximity in Retail Banking

  Staff Working Paper 2023-2 Santiago Carbo-Valverde, Héctor Pérez Saiz, Hongyu Xiao

  This paper measures how both geographical and cultural proximity of bank branches affect household credit choice and pricing. For credit products that require high levels of ex-ante screening, we find that both proximities can complement each other in reducing the cost of providing soft information, thereby increasing credit access.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial institutions, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, D83, G, G2, G20, G21, R, R2, R22, Z, Z1, Z10, Z13

• The 2021–22 Merchant Acceptance Survey Pilot Study

  Staff Discussion Paper 2023-1 Angelika Welte, Joy Wu

  The rise in digital payment innovations has spurred a discussion about the future of cash at the point of sale. The Bank conducted the 2021–22 Merchant Acceptance Survey Pilot Study to study trends in merchant cash acceptance and monitor conditions for the potential issuance of a central bank digital currency.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C8, D, D2, D22, E, E4, L, L2

• Simulating Intraday Transactions in the Canadian Retail Batch System

  Staff Working Paper 2023-1 Nellie Zhang

  This paper proposes a unique approach to simulate intraday transactions in the Canadian retail payments batch system when such transactions are unobtainable. The simulation procedure has potential for helping with data-deficient problems where only high-level aggregate information is available.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C6, C63, E, E4, E42, E5, E58