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2122 Results

Measuring household financial stress in Canada using consumer surveys

Staff analytical note 2024-5 Nicolas Bédard, Patrick Sabourin
We use data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations to understand how households are coping with high inflation and high interest rates. We build a subjective measure of financial stress and find that the level of stress is at a historical high but remains manageable for most households.

Markets Look Beyond the Headline

Staff analytical note 2018-37 Bruno Feunou, James Kyeong, Raisa Leiderman
Many reports and analyses interpret the release of new economic data based on the headline surprise—for instance, total inflation, real GDP growth and the unemployment rate. However, we find that headline news alone cannot adequately explain the responses of market prices to new information. Rather, market prices react more strongly, on average, to non-headline news such as the composition of GDP growth, quality of jobs created and revisions to past data. Thus, tracking the impact of non-headline information released on the news day is crucial in analyzing how markets interpret and react to new economic data.

Consumer Cash Withdrawal Behaviour: Branch Networks and Online Financial Innovation

Staff working paper 2021-28 Heng Chen, Matthew Strathearn, Marcel Voia
The physical network of bank branches is important in how consumers manage their cash holdings. This paper estimates how consumer withdrawal behaviour responds to the distance they must travel to their branch.
November 11, 2008

Merchants' Costs of Accepting Means of Payment: Is Cash the Least Costly?

In a competitive sales environment, merchants are compelled to offer consumers the option of paying for goods and services using a variety of payment methods, including cash, debit card, or credit card. Each method entails different costs and benefits to merchants. To better understand the costs of accepting retail payments, the Bank of Canada surveyed over 500 Canadian merchants and found that most consider cash the least costly. This article investigated this perception by calculating the variable costs per transaction of accepting different means of payment. The findings are that costs for each payment method vary by merchant and transaction value, with debit cards the least costly payment for a broad cross-section of merchants.

Monetary Policy Implementation in a Negative Rate Environment

Staff working paper 2017-25 Michael Boutros, Jonathan Witmer
Monetary policy implementation could, in theory, be constrained by deeply negative rates since overnight market participants may have an incentive to invest in cash rather than lend to other participants.

Crisis facilities as a source of public information

Staff analytical note 2025-7 Lerby Ergun
During the COVID-19 financial market crisis, central banks introduced programs to support liquidity in important core funding markets. As well as acting as a backstop to market prices, these programs produce useful trading data on prevailing market conditions. When summary information from this data is shared publicly, it can help market participants understand current conditions and aid the recovery of market functioning.

Shaping the future: Policy shocks and the GDP growth distribution

Can central bank and government policies impact the risks around the outlook for GDP growth? We find that fiscal stimulus makes strong GDP growth more likely—even more so when monetary policy is constrained—rather than weak GDP growth less likely. Thus, fiscal stimulus should accelerate the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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