Staff working papers

Staff working papers provide a forum for staff to publish work-in-progress research intended for journal publication.

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1320 result(s)

Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada

Staff Working Paper 2017-56 Christopher Henry, Kim Huynh, Gradon Nicholls
There has been tremendous discussion of Bitcoin, digital currencies and FinTech. However, there is limited empirical evidence of Bitcoin’s adoption and usage. We propose a methodology to collect a nationally representative sample using the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) to track the ubiquity and usage of Bitcoin in Canada.

Risk-Neutral Moment-Based Estimation of Affine Option Pricing Models

Staff Working Paper 2017-55 Bruno Feunou, Cédric Okou
This paper provides a novel methodology for estimating option pricing models based on risk-neutral moments. We synthesize the distribution extracted from a panel of option prices and exploit linear relationships between risk-neutral cumulants and latent factors within the continuous time affine stochastic volatility framework.

What Drives Episodes of Settlement Fails in the Government of Canada Bond Market?

We study settlement fails for trades in the Government of Canada bond market. We find that settlement fails do not occur independently. Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we examine three drivers of fails.

Competing Currencies in the Laboratory

Staff Working Paper 2017-53 Janet Hua Jiang, Cathy Zhang
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.

Good Volatility, Bad Volatility and Option Pricing

Staff Working Paper 2017-52 Bruno Feunou, Cédric Okou
Advances in variance analysis permit the splitting of the total quadratic variation of a jump diffusion process into upside and downside components. Recent studies establish that this decomposition enhances volatility predictions, and highlight the upside/downside variance spread as a driver of the asymmetry in stock price distributions.

Identifying the Degree of Collusion Under Proportional Reduction

Staff Working Paper 2017-51 Oleksandr Shcherbakov, Naoki Wakamori
Proportional reduction is a common cartel practice in which cartel members reduce their output proportionately. We develop a method to quantify this reduction relative to a benchmark market equilibrium scenario and relate the reduction to the traditional conduct parameter.

Is the Discretionary Income Effect of Oil Price Shocks a Hoax?

Staff Working Paper 2017-50 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, Xiaoqing Zhou
The transmission of oil price shocks has been a question of central interest in macroeconomics since the 1970s. There has been renewed interest in this question after the large and persistent fall in the real price of oil in 2014–16. In the context of this debate, Ramey (2017) makes the striking claim that the existing literature on the transmission of oil price shocks is fundamentally confused about the question of how to quantify the effect of oil price shocks.

The Causal Impact of Migration on US Trade: Evidence from Political Refugees

Staff Working Paper 2017-49 Walter Steingress
Immigrants can increase international trade by shifting preferences towards the goods of their country of origin and by reducing bilateral transaction costs. Using geographical variation across U.S. states for the period 2008 to 2013, I estimate the respective causal impact of immigrants on U.S. exports and imports.

Optimal Interbank Regulation

Staff Working Paper 2017-48 Thomas J. Carter
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the regulation of interbank markets. A review of the literature in this area identifies two gaps: first, the literature has tended to make ad hoc assumptions about the interbank contract space, which makes it difficult to generate convincing policy prescriptions; second, the literature has tended to focus on ex-post interventions that kick in only after an interbank disruption has come underway (e.g., open-market operations, lender-of-last-resort interventions, bail-outs), rather than ex-ante prudential policies.

Cash Versus Card: Payment Discontinuities and the Burden of Holding Coins

Staff Working Paper 2017-47 Heng Chen, Kim Huynh, Oz Shy
Cash is the preferred method of payment for small value transactions generally less than $25. We provide insight to this finding with a new theoretical model that characterizes and compares consumers’ costs of paying with cash to paying with cards for each transaction.
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