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We analyze the value proposition and limitations of decentralized finance (DeFi). Based on a distributed ledger and smart contracts, DeFi can guarantee the execution of financial contracts, potentially lowering the costs of intermediation and improving financial inclusion.

In times of high uncertainty, governments often implement interventions such as bailouts to financial institutions. To use public resources efficiently and to avoid major spillovers to the rest of the economy, policy-makers try to identify which institutions should receive assistance.

The author empirically assesses the effects of institutional and political factors on the need and willingness of governments to make large fiscal adjustments.

This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next.

In continental Europe, labour shares in national income have exhibited considerable variation since 1970. Empirical and theoretical research suggests that the evolution of labour markets and labour market imperfections can, in part, explain this phenomenon.

We present results from the 2022 Methods-of-Payment Survey, including updated payment shares based on a three-day shopping diary. We also assess various factors associated with long-term trends in cash use.

We assess the motivations for changing capital controls and their effectiveness in India, a country with extensive and long-standing controls. We focus on the controls on foreign borrowing that can, in principle, be motivated by macroprudential concerns.

In the interbank market, banks will sometimes trade below the central bank's deposit rate. We explain this anomaly using a theory based on market frictions and relationship lending.

The financial system makes an important contribution to the welfare of all Canadians. The ability of households and firms to confidently hold and transfer financial assets is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Canadian economy.

I provide evidence that portfolio equity inflows can have expansionary effects on GDP and inflation if not offset by monetary policy. I use a shift-share instrument to estimate equity inflows based on plausibly exogenous timing of inflows into mutual funds with heterogeneous country portfolios.