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Our paper contributes to the discussion about the utility of stablecoins for retail payments through an objective, evidence-based approach that compares stablecoins with traditional retail payment methods. The paper also provides insights that could be useful in the design of central bank digital currencies.

Indeed, a strong research environment has long been a hallmark of the Bank. We also want to encourage research relevant to our business, especially with respect to monetary policy and financial system stability, at universities all across Canada.

Information received since the last Monetary Policy Report continues to show solid economic growth in the United States, Europe, and the emerging markets.

While the volume and value of bank notes have continued to increase, the use of cash as a payment method has been affected by the growing use of electronic alternatives. Taylor reports on a 2004 Bank of Canada survey of consumers' payment habits and their perceptions of cash and its alternatives, including their confidence in the security of bank notes. Analysis of the survey results shows that numerous factors affect the demand for bank notes, including income, age, education, gender, the use of debit and credit cards, and the perceived convenience of cash. Taylor also includes a report on the construction of a bank note confidence index that will serve as a benchmark for future surveys.

Portfolio-balance models of the yield curve are notoriously hard to estimate. This paper offers a simple, two-step estimation approach that can be implemented with standard term structure estimation methods. In our application to U.S. Treasury data, our method recovers economically interpretable drivers of the yield curve.

In this issue, Bank staff discuss recent developments in experimental macroeconomics, research results on price-level and unemployment thresholds in forward guidance, and the spillover effects of quantitative easing in advance economies. Articles also explore the competitiveness strategies of Canadian firms as well as their use of financial derivatives.

Repeated interactions between borrowers and lenders create the possibility of dynamic pricing: lenders compete aggressively with low prices to attract new borrowers and then raise their prices once borrowers have made a commitment. We find such pricing patterns in the Canadian mortgage market.

The Annual Report outlines the Bank’s activities and achievements in 2018. It includes the financial statements and a message from Governor Stephen S. Poloz.

Despite the efficiency gains that accompany automation, most large futures exchanges have been reluctant to move away from the traditional trading floor, citing early evidence that open outcry exchanges were more liquid than electronic exchanges. More recent studies, however, suggest that electronic trading is superior to open outcry in many respects, including liquidity. In this article, the author compares the two trading systems. Although many exchanges are shifting towards electronic trading, there are still several obstacles to this transition. But as technology rapidly reduces the cost of automation and increases the demand for global 24-hour trading, a worldwide transition to electronic order-matching will likely be the next important milestone for futures exchanges. Less-automated exchanges (including the Canadian futures exchanges) will undoubtedly continue to study and promote automation in order to keep pace with technological innovations.

Canada’s financial system is resilient. Overall, households, businesses, banks and non-bank financial intermediaries successfully weathered the pandemic, a period of elevated inflation, and sharp increases in interest rates. But the trade war currently threatens the Canadian economy and poses risks to financial stability.