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This article examines four indicators of balance-sheet risks—leverage, capital, asset liquidity and funding—among different types of financial institutions in Canada over the past three decades. It also discusses relevant developments in the banking sector that could have contributed to the observed dynamics. The authors find that the various risk indicators decreased during the period for most of the non-Big Six financial institutions, but remained relatively unchanged for the Big Six banks. In addition, the balance-sheet risk indicators became more heterogeneous across financial institutions. The observed overall decline and increased heterogeneity follow certain regulatory changes, such as the introduction of the liquidity guidelines on funding in 1995 and the implementation of bank-specific leverage requirements in 2000. Given that these regulations required more balance-sheet risk management, they have likely contributed to the increased resilience of the banking sector.

Recent studies find that cash remains a dominant payment choice for small-value transactions despite the prevalence of alternative means of payment such as debit and credit cards. For policy makers an important question is whether consumers truly prefer using cash or merchants restrict card usage.

This paper studies the sensitivity of Canadian producer prices to the Canada-U.S. exchange rate. Using a unique product-level price data set, we estimate and analyze the impact of movements in the exchange rate on both domestic and export producer prices.

This paper builds a two-country DSGE model to study the quantitative impact of financial frictions on business cycle co-movements when investors have foreign asset exposure. The investor in each country holds capital in both countries and faces a leverage constraint on her debt.

Responses to the summer survey suggest that businesses generally remain positive about the outlook, but are mindful of renewed uncertainty regarding the global economic environment.

This issue features four articles that present research and analysis by Bank staff. The first focuses on financial transaction taxes; the second on the role of central counterparties in over-the-counter markets; and the third on monetary policy and the risk-taking channel, as seen in the lending behaviour of banks. The fourth article presents research findings on the use of retail payment instruments and discusses the implications of innovations in retail payments on the use of cash over the long term.

Governor Mark Carney discusses financial system reform in a speech to the Canadian Club of Montréal.