Phoebe Tian is a Senior Economist in the Financial Stability Department (FSD). Her research interests include financial economics and empirical industrial organization. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Canada transitioned to a new wholesale payment system, Lynx, in August 2021. Lynx is based on a real-time settlement model that eliminates credit risk in the system. This model can require more liquidity; however, Lynx’s design allows Canada’s wholesale payments to settle efficiently.
We investigate the unintended consequences of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). Originally designed to help borrowers refinance after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, HARP inadvertently strengthened the market power of incumbent lenders by creating a cost advantage for them. Despite a 2013 policy rectifying this cost advantage, we still find significant welfare losses for borrowers.
We show how participants in Canada’s new high-value payment system save liquidity by exploiting the new gridlock resolution arrangement. The findings have important implications for the design of these systems and shed light on financial institutions’ liquidity preference.
We quantitatively assess the changes in participants’ payment behaviour from modernizing Canada's high-value payments system to Lynx. Our analysis suggests that Lynx's liquidity-saving mechanism encourages liquidity pooling and early payments submission, resulting in improved efficiency for participants but with slightly increased payment delays.
