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This report reviews the Bank of Canada's oversight activities during 2013 and priorities for 2014 pursuant to the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act (PCSA). This annual report is intended to provide transparency and accountability regarding the Bank's activities in this area.

This note presents a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model of the global oil market. The model identifies four types of shocks with different economic interpretations: oil supply shocks, oil-market-specific demand shocks, storage demand shocks and shocks to global economic growth.

Using stock market data on banks, we show that the book value of loans recognizes losses with a delay. This delayed accounting is important for regulation because the requirements regulators impose are based on book values.

What risks could stablecoins pose to the financial system? We argue that the stabilization mechanisms of stablecoins give rise to the risk of confidence runs, which can propagate to broader cryptoasset markets and the traditional financial sector. We also argue that stablecoins can contribute to financial stability risks by facilitating the buildup of leverage and liquidity mismatch in decentralized finance. Such risks cannot be addressed by ensuring the price stability of stablecoins alone. Finally, we explore the potential implications of stablecoins for the current system of bank-intermediated credit and for monetary policy.

We characterize the bias in cross-sectional Hill estimates caused by common underlying factors and propose two simple-to-implement remedies. To test for the presence, direction and size of the bias, we use monthly US stock returns and annual US Census county population data.

Funding structures affected the amount of financial stress different countries and sectors experienced during the spread of COVID-19 in early 2020. Policy responses targeting specific vulnerabilities were more effective at mitigating this stress than those supporting banks or the economy more broadly.

Resource shares, defined as the fraction of total household spending going to each person in a household, are important for assessing individual material well-being, inequality and poverty. They are difficult to identify because consumption is measured typically at the household level, and many goods are jointly consumed, so that individual-level consumption in multi-person households is not directly observed.

Does the transmission of monetary policy change when interest rates are low or negative? We shed light on this question by analyzing the international bank lending channels of monetary policy using regulatory data on banks from four small open economies: Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway.

The 2025 Methods-of-Payment Survey provides insights into how Canadians pay for their day-to-day purchases and how they use cash (i.e. banknotes and coins). While contactless card payments dominate in-person transactions, most Canadians maintain favourable views on cash and still hold and use it. They are also increasingly adopting mobile payments.

The rise in digital payment innovations has spurred a discussion about the future of cash at the point of sale. The Bank conducted the 2021–22 Merchant Acceptance Survey Pilot Study to study trends in merchant cash acceptance and monitor conditions for the potential issuance of a central bank digital currency.