November 11, 2008 Merchants' Costs of Accepting Means of Payment: Is Cash the Least Costly? Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2008-2009 Carlos Arango, Varya Taylor 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. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles
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. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): G, G2, G21, R, R2, R22 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Cash and bank notes, Digital assets and fintech
December 23, 2004 Financial System Review - December 2004 The Canadian financial system comprises financial markets, financial institutions, and the clearing and settlement systems. Content Type(s): Publications, Financial Stability Report
December 10, 2013 The Residential Mortgage Market in Canada: A Primer Financial System Review - December 2013 Allan Crawford, Césaire Meh, Jie Zhou Content Type(s): Publications, Financial System Review articles
June 11, 2009 The Complexities of Financial Risk Management and Systemic Risks Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2009 Frank Milne Risk-management systems in financial institutions have come under increasing scrutiny in light of the current financial crisis, resulting in calls for improvements and an increased role for regulators. Yet such objectives miss the intricacy at the heart of the risk-management process. This article outlines the complexity inherent in any modern risk-management system, which arises because there are shortcuts in the theoretical models that risk managers need to be aware of, as well as the difficulties in sensible calibration of model parameters. The author suggests that prudential regulation of such systems should focus on failures within the financial firm and in the market interactions between firms and reviews possible strategies that can improve the performance of risk management and microprudential regulatory practice. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles
March 29, 2010 Beyond Recovery: Sustaining Economic Growth Remarks Paul Jenkins Economic Club of Canada Toronto, Ontario John Maynard Keynes said the objective of "analysis is … to provide ourselves with an organized and orderly method of thinking out particular problems .… This is the nature of economic thinking." Content Type(s): Press, Speeches and appearances, Remarks
August 25, 2015 The Long-Term Evolution of House Prices: An International Perspective Remarks Lawrence L. Schembri Canadian Association for Business Economics Kingston, Ontario Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri discusses the international evidence of underlying determinants of long-term movements in house prices. Content Type(s): Press, Speeches and appearances, Remarks
Estimating the Slope of the Demand Function at Auctions for Government of Canada Bonds Staff discussion paper 2023-12 Bo Young Chang We use bid data from Government of Canada bond auctions between 1999 and 2021 to gauge the yield sensitivity of these bonds to the issuance amount. Our new metric estimates the demand function of the bidders at each auction and offers insights into the relationship between supply and yield of government bonds. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers JEL Code(s): D, D4, D44, G, G1, G12 Research Theme(s): Financial markets and funds management, Funds management, Market functioning
June 13, 2013 Monitoring and Assessing Risks in Canada’s Shadow Banking Sector Financial System Review - June 2013 Toni Gravelle, Timothy Grieder, Stéphane Lavoie Content Type(s): Publications, Financial System Review articles
March 18, 2008 Canada's Experience with a Flexible Exchange Rate in the 1950s: Valuable Lessons Learned Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2008 Lawrence L. Schembri Schembri studies Canada's post-World War II experience in introducing a floating exchange rate, including its effects on the Canadian economy and its influence on the development of macroeconomic theory. In particular, Canada's flexible exchange rate and high degree of capital mobility with the United States provided an unprecedented experiment for macroeconomic policy. The successes and difficulties encountered by Canadian authorities in managing monetary and fiscal policy under this regime drew the interest of researchers at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere and had a significant impact on the development of the Mundell-Fleming model, the path-breaking innovation in modern open-economy macroeconomics. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles