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Changes in survey mode (e.g., online, offline) may influence the values of survey responses, and may be particularly problematic when comparing repeated cross-sectional surveys.

We explore quantitative and qualitative information about Canadians who face barriers to making digital payments. We also consider the implications of ongoing digitalization for modern financial inclusion and a potential central bank digital currency.

This issue features a summary of the Bank’s annual conference, Financial Intermediation and Vulnerabilities, which took place in October 2012, as well as two articles that present analysis of international macroeconomic coordination since the global financial crisis and the U.S. recovery from the Great Recession.

Capital markets and their related financial instruments make an important contribution to the welfare of Canadians. The Bank of Canada is interested in the efficient functioning of capital markets through each of its responsibilities for monetary policy, the financial system, and funds management. Hendry and King highlight the key findings of Bank research published over the past year that addresses capital market efficiency and summarize lessons that have been learned. The research conducted thus far suggests that Canadian capital markets are efficient for a capital market of Canada's size but are less diverse than the U.S. capital markets, indicating that there is room for improvement in certain areas.

During the recent financial crisis, one of the forces set in motion by the initial losses on subprime-mortgage loans was a significant decline in the market liquidity of assets and in the ability of financial institutions to obtain funding in wholesale markets. In this article, the authors summarize recent research that clarifies the role of liquidity in destabilizing the financial system and examine the implications of this research for the recently announced financial system reforms, including Basel III.

Using two complementary approaches, we investigate the importance of U.S. macroeconomic news in driving low-frequency fluctuations in the term structure of interest rates in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We find that U.S. macroeconomic news is particularly important to explain changes in the expectation components of the nominal, real and break-even inflation rates of small open economies.

We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Increases in the Chair’s text-, voice-, or face-emotion indices during these testimonies generally raise stock prices and lower their volatility.

We measure systemic risk in the network of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) as the probability that two or more FMIs have a large credit risk exposure to the same FMI participant.

This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents).

Donald Gow had a great interest in public administration and in budgetary reform in the federal government.1 He was one in a long line of Queen's professors who have focused on various budgetary matters at the federal level.