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The MacroFinancial Risk Assessment Framework (MFRAF) models the interconnections between liquidity and solvency in a financial system, with multiple institutions linked through an interbank network. The MFRAF integrates funding liquidity risk as an endogenous outcome of the interactions between solvency risk and the liquidity profiles of banks, which is a complementary approach to the new […]

Today, the Canadian OTC Derivatives Working Group published a paper that sets out preliminary recommendations for implementing Canada's G-20 commitments related to OTC derivatives.

Understanding the factors that determine the migration of labour between regions is crucial for assessing the economy’s response to macroeconomic shocks and identifying policies that will encourage an efficient reallocation of labour. By examining the determinants of migration within Canada from 1991 to 2006, this article provides evidence that regional differences in employment rates and household incomes tend to increase labour migration, and that provincial borders and language differences are barriers to migration.

This paper assesses the resilience of flexible inflation targeting in the presence of large and persistent supply shocks.

Economists' long-standing interest in the degree to which exchange rate movements are reflected in prices was rekindled in the 1970s by a combination of rising inflation and the adoption of more flexible exchange rate regimes in many industrialized countries. Specifically, there were concerns that a large currency depreciation could degenerate into an inflationary spiral. Such fears were curtailed in the 1980s and early 1990s as industrialized countries began to reduce and stabilize their inflation rates. The low-inflation period most industrialized countries entered approximately a decade ago coincided with significant exchange rate depreciations that had much smaller effects on consumer prices than expected. This led to a belief that the extent to which exchange rate movements are passed through to consumer prices has declined. In this article, the authors examine why pass-through could be incomplete and review empirical estimates to determine whether pass-through has indeed declined, suggesting possible reasons for this decline and discussing the implications for monetary policy.

Canada transitioned to a new wholesale payment system, Lynx, in August 2021. Lynx is based on a real-time settlement model that eliminates credit risk in the system. This model can require more liquidity; however, Lynx’s design allows Canada’s wholesale payments to settle efficiently.

The recent financial crisis and global economic slowdown have renewed interest in monetary policy options when the policy interest rate is at or near zero.

Our paper employs smartphone data to construct an improved cash access metric by accounting for both spatial agglomeration and households’ travel patterns. We find that incorporating trip-chaining into the travel metric could show that travel costs are from 15 to 25% less than not incorporating trip-chaining and that the biggest decrease is driven by rural residents.

The financial crisis of 2007-09 and the subsequent extended period of historically low real interest rates have revived the question of whether economic agents are willing to take on more risk when interest rates remain low for a prolonged time period. This increased appetite for risk, which causes economic agents to search for investment assets and strategies that generate higher investment returns, has been called the risk-taking channel of monetary policy. Recent academic research on banks suggests that lending policies in times of low interest rates can be consistent with the existence of a risk-taking channel of monetary policy in Europe, South America, the United States and Canada. Specifically, studies find that the terms of loans to risky borrowers become less stringent in periods of low interest rates. This risk-taking channel may amplify the effects of traditional transmission mechanisms, resulting in the creation of excessive credit.

This paper studies how unsecured consumer credit impacts the extent to which unemployment insurance (UI) policies smooth aggregate consumption fluctuations over the business cycle. Using a general equilibrium real business cycle model, I find that unsecured credit amplifies the extent to which UI smooths cyclical consumption fluctuations.