H - Public Economics

• Alternative Futures for Government of Canada Debt Management

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-15 Corey Garriott, Sophie Lefebvre, Guillaume Nolin, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Adrian Walton

  This paper presents four blue-sky ideas for lowering the cost of the Government of Canada’s debt without increasing the debt’s risk profile. We argue that each idea would improve the secondary-market liquidity of government debt, thereby increasing the demand for government bonds and thus lowering their cost at issuance.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Debt management, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G2, G24, H, H6, H63

• Government of Canada Fixed-Income Market Ecology

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-10 Léanne Berger-Soucy, Corey Garriott, André Usche

  This discussion paper is the third in the Financial Markets Department’s series on the structure of Canadian financial markets. These papers are called “ecologies” because they study the interactions among market participants, infrastructures, regulations and the terms of the traded contract itself.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Debt management, Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial services JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G2, G20, H, H6, H63

• Blockchain-Based Settlement for Asset Trading

  Staff Working Paper 2018-45 Jonathan Chiu, Thorsten Koeppl

  Can securities be settled on a blockchain and, if so, what are the gains relative to existing settlement systems? We consider a blockchain that ensures delivery versus payment by linking transfers of assets with payments and operates using a proof-of-work protocol. The main benefit of a blockchain is faster and more flexible settlement, whereas the challenge is to avoid settlement fails when participants fork the chain to get rid of trading losses.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Digital currencies and fintech, Economic models, Financial markets, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): G, G2, H, H4, P, P4, P43

• Incentive Compatibility on the Blockchain

  Staff Working Paper 2018-34 Jonathan Chiu, Thorsten Koeppl

  A blockchain is a digital ledger that keeps track of a record of ownership without the need for a designated party to update and enforce changes to the record. The updating of the ledger is done directly by the users of the blockchain and is traditionally governed by a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Digital currencies and fintech, Economic models, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): G, G2, H, H4, P, P4, P43

• Sources of Borrowing and Fiscal Multipliers

  Staff Working Paper 2018-32 Romanos Priftis, Srecko Zimic

  This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Debt management, Economic models, Fiscal policy, International financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E6, E62, F, F4, F41, H, H3

• Housing Price Network Effects from Public Transit Investment: Evidence from Vancouver

  Staff Working Paper 2018-18 Alex Chernoff, Andrea Craig

  In this paper, we estimate the effect on housing prices of the expansion of the Vancouver SkyTrain rapid transit network during the period 2001–11. We extend the canonical residential sorting equilibrium framework to include commuting time in the household utility function.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): H, H4, H41, R, R2, R21, R4, R41

• The Government of Canada Debt Securities Data Set

  Technical Report No. 112 Jeffrey Gao, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Gabriel Rodriguez Rondon

  We present the daily time series of the outstanding amounts of all Government of Canada marketable debt securities from July 2001 to June 2017.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Debt management, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C8, C80, G, G1, G10, H, H6, H63