Research
-
-
COVID-19 Hasn’t Killed Merchant Acceptance of Cash: Results from the 2023 Merchant Acceptance Survey
The Bank of Canada’s Merchant Acceptance Survey finds that 96% of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada accepted cash in 2023. Acceptance of debit and credit cards has increased to 89%, and acceptance of digital payments has also increased. However, Canada is far from being a cashless society. -
CBDC: Banking and Anonymity
We examine the optimal amount of user anonymity in a central bank digital currency in the context of bank lending. Anonymity, defined as the lender’s inability to discern an entrepreneur’s actions that enable fund diversion, influences the choice of payment instrument due to its impact on a bank’s lending decisions. -
Monetary Policy Transmission Through Shadow and Traditional Banks
I investigate how monetary policy transmits to mortgage rates via the mortgage market concentration channel for both traditional and shadow banks in the United States from 2009 to 2019. On average, shadow and traditional banks exhibit only a slight disparity in transmitting monetary shocks to mortgage rates. -
Regulation, Emissions and Productivity: Evidence from China’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan
We study the degree to which China’s 11th Five-Year Plan softens trade-offs between emissions and output. Our model suggests efficient regulation could have further increased aggregate productivity by 3.5% and output by 4.7% without any increase in aggregate emissions. -
What has been putting upward pressure on CORRA?
From the autumn of 2023 into early 2024, the Canadian Overnight Repo Rate Average (CORRA), a measure of the cost of overnight general collateral Canadian dollar repos, was consistently well above the Bank’s target for the overnight rate. We find that, among several factors, long bond positions that require repo financing are the main driver of the recent upward pressure on CORRA. -
Decomposing Large Banks’ Systemic Trading Losses
Do banks realize simultaneous trading losses because they invest in the same assets, or because different assets are subject to the same macro shocks? This paper decomposes the comovements of bank trading losses into two orthogonal channels: portfolio overlap and common shocks. -
How changes in the share of constrained households affect the effectiveness of monetary policy
We measure how the change in the share of constrained households in Canada following the COVID-19 recession has impacted the effectiveness of monetary policy. -
How Do Agents Form Macroeconomic Expectations? Evidence from Inflation Uncertainty
The uncertainty regarding inflation that is observed in density forecasts of households and professionals helps macroeconomists understand the formation mechanism of inflation expectations. Shocks to inflation take time to be perceived by all agents in the economy, and such rigidity is lower in a high-inflation environment. -
Central Bank Digital Currency and Banking Choices
To what extent does a central bank digital currency (CBDC) compete with bank deposits? To answer this question, we develop and estimate a structural model where each household chooses which financial institution to deposit their digital money with.