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In this article, author Michel Rochette of the Bank's Risk-Management Unit briefly describes the initiatives undertaken to identify, analyze, model, and manage the principal risks inherent in the transactions of the Exchange Fund Account (EFA), where the international reserves of the federal government are held. The author focuses on five types of risk: credit risk, market risk, liquidity risk, operational risk, and legal risk. In addition, the author presents the risk-management principles underlying the activities of the EFA and the governance structure of the Account.

In the last half-year, the economic expansion in Canada has become well established, supported by low inflation, highly stimulative monetary conditions, and a strong U.S. economy.

After the financial crisis of 2007–09, many jurisdictions introduced new banking regulations to make banks more resilient and less likely to fail. These regulations included tighter limits for the quality and quantity of bank capital and introduced minimum standards for liquidity. But what was the impact of these changes?

Governor Tiff Macklem talks about how important trade is for the economic recovery. He discusses what policymakers and business leaders can do to encourage growth in trade.

This note introduces several market-based indicators and examines how they can further inform the Bank of Canada’s vulnerability assessment of Canadian financial institutions. Market-based indicators of leverage suggest that the solvency risk for major Canadian banks has increased since the beginning of the oil-price correction in the second half of 2014.

I analyze the relationship between carrying a credit card balance and future financial stress. I find that carrying a balance significantly increases the likelihood that credit card holders miss future debt payments. This likelihood tends to rise as credit card balances grow and are held for long periods.

While Government of Canada bond transactions of hedge funds are typically in the opposite direction to those of other market participants, during the peak period of market turmoil in March 2020, hedge funds sold these bonds, just as other market participants did. This shows that hedge funds can at times contribute to one-sided markets and amplify declines in market liquidity.

Trading flows affect Government of Canada bond prices. Our estimates suggest a sale of 1% of the available supply of bonds typically lowers bond prices by 0.2%. From 2000 to 2025, demand from institutional investors, such as Canadian pension funds and foreign investors, explains 69% of quarterly price variation, with the remainder explained by changes in the supply of bonds.

This paper shows point identification in first-price auction models with risk aversion and unobserved auction heterogeneity by exploiting multiple bids from each auction and variation in the number of bidders. The required exclusion restriction is shown to be consistent with a large class of entry models.

Optimal coordination of monetary and macroprudential policies implies higher risk weights on (safe) bonds any time that banks are required to hold additional capital buffers. Coordination also implies a somewhat tighter monetary-policy stance whenever such capital buffers are released.