Posts
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The Impact of Liquidity on Bank Profitability
The recent crisis has underlined the importance of sound bank liquidity management. In response, regulators are devising new liquidity standards with the aim of making the financial system more stable and resilient. In this paper, the authors analyse the impact of liquid asset holdings on bank profitability for a sample of large U.S. and Canadian banks. -
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December 15, 2015
Financial System Review - December 2015
The Reports section of the Financial System Review examines selected issues of relevance to the Canadian and global financial systems. The December 2015 issue features two reports on significant developments in the financial system related to household finances: the importance of residential mortgage securitization for Canadian housing finance and the changing patterns of indebtedness of Canadian households. -
June 17, 2008
A Tool for Assessing Financial Vulnerabilities in the Household Sector
In this article, the authors build on the framework used in the Bank of Canada's Financial System Review to assess the evolution of household indebtedness and financial vulnerabilities in response to changing economic conditions. To achieve this, they first compare two microdata sets generated by Ipsos Reid's Canadian Financial Monitor and Statistics Canada's Survey of Financial Security. They find that the surveys are broadly comparable, despite methodological differences. This enables them to use the combined information content for the identification of the threshold value of the debt-service ratio (DSR). The article then presents an innovative framework that uses household-level microdata to simulate changes in the distribution of the DSR under various stress scenarios. The authors show how this framework can be used by analyzing the effects of two different scenarios on the distribution of the debt-service ratio and the impact on vulnerable households. This tool will enable researchers to refine their analyses of current risks to the financial health of Canadian households. The article concludes with comments on future directions for refining the Bank's analyses of household sector risk. -
Competing Currencies in the Laboratory
We investigate competition between two intrinsically worthless currencies as a result of decentralized interactions between human subjects. We design a laboratory experiment based on a simple two-country, two-currency search model to study factors that affect circulation patterns and equilibrium selection. -
The Market for Acquiring Card Payments from Small and Medium-Sized Canadian Merchants
This note uses industry data and a unique dataset of small and medium-sized merchants to provide insights into the acquirer-merchant market in Canada. -
June 18, 2010
Fortune Favours the Bold
From the end of 2008 to the middle of last year, Canada experienced a short, sharp recession. With the exception of government spending, all major components of aggregate demand declined, and industrial production dropped 15 per cent. -
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Dynamic Privacy Choices
Consumers often express concerns about lack of privacy, but they still give up a lot of data to digital platforms. This paper builds a dynamic game-theoretic model of data collection and privacy protection, which potentially explains consumers’ behaviour.