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2182 Results

February 23, 2012

Household Insolvency in Canada

With increasing levels of household debt in recent years, the number of households that may be vulnerable to a negative economic shock is rising as well. Decisions made by both the debtor and the creditor can contribute to insolvency. This article presents some stylized facts about insolvency in Canada’s household sector and analyzes the role of creditors in insolvencies. The average debt of an individual filing for bankruptcy is more than 1.5 times that of an average Canadian household; bankruptcy filers tend to be unemployed or in low-wage jobs, and are typically renters. The article reports that banks that approve more loans per branch, which is interpreted as less-intensive use of soft information (such as the loan officer’s assessment of the applicant’s character), experience more client bankruptcies. This finding has important policy implications, because financial institutions that do not use soft information risk further deterioration in their lending portfolios.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2

Patterns and Determinants of Global Cryptocurrency Flows

Staff working paper 2026-15 Christian Friedrich, Laura Zhao
This paper analyzes cross-border cryptocurrency flows, focusing on Bitcoin and four major stablecoins. Using data for 162 countries, we identify the key determinants, including responses to weak economic conditions and demand for remittances. A COVID-19 case study supports these findings and emphasizes the role of cryptocurrencies in global finance.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): E, E4, F, F3, F32, F38, F5, F51, G, G1, G15, G2, G23 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Digital assets and fintech

Combining Large Numbers of Density Predictions with Bayesian Predictive Synthesis

Staff working paper 2023-45 Tony Chernis
I show how to combine large numbers of forecasts using several approaches within the framework of a Bayesian predictive synthesis. I find techniques that choose and combine a handful of forecasts, known as global-local shrinkage priors, perform best.

Financial Constraint and Productivity: Evidence from Canadian SMEs

Staff working paper 2016-44 Shutao Cao, Danny Leung
The degree to which financial constraint is binding is often not directly observable in commonly used business data sets (e.g., Compustat). In this paper, we measure and estimate the likelihood of a firm being constrained by external financing using a data set of small- and medium-sized Canadian firms.

The Canadian Neutral Rate of Interest through the Lens of an Overlapping-Generations Model

Staff discussion paper 2023-5 Martin Kuncl, Dmitry Matveev
We use a small open economy model with overlapping generations to evaluate secular dynamics of the neutral rate in Canada from 1980 to 2018. We find that changes in both foreign and domestic factors resulted in a protracted decline in the neutral rate.

Understanding the Cross‐Country Effects of US Technology Shocks

Staff working paper 2017-23 Thuy Lan Nguyen, Wataru Miyamoto
Business cycles are substantially correlated across countries. Yet most existing models are not able to generate substantial transmission through international trade. We show that the nature of such transmission depends fundamentally on the features determining the responsiveness of labor supply and labor demand to international relative prices.

Strengthening Inflation Targeting: Review and Renewal Processes in Canada and Other Advanced Jurisdictions

Staff discussion paper 2020-7 Robert Amano, Thomas J. Carter, Lawrence L. Schembri
We summarize the review and renewal process at four central banks (Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bank of England, Sveriges Riksbank and the US Federal Reserve Bank) and compare them with the process at the Bank of Canada, which has been well-established since 2001.

Endogenous Time Variation in Vector Autoregressions

Staff working paper 2020-16 Danilo Leiva-Leon, Luis Uzeda
We introduce a new class of time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VARs) where the identified structural innovations are allowed to influence — contemporaneously and with a lag — the dynamics of the intercept and autoregressive coefficients in these models.

Alternative Futures for Government of Canada Debt Management

This paper presents four blue-sky ideas for lowering the cost of the Government of Canada’s debt without increasing the debt’s risk profile. We argue that each idea would improve the secondary-market liquidity of government debt, thereby increasing the demand for government bonds and thus lowering their cost at issuance.

Labour Supply and Firm Size

Staff working paper 2023-47 Lin Shao, Faisal Sohail, Emircan Yurdagul
This paper documents a systematic pattern of how wages, hours and their relationship vary across firms of different sizes. Using a model with heterogeneous firms and workers, we show how the interplay between wages, hours and firm size affect worker sorting and inequality.
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