November 15, 2012 The Changing Landscape for Retail Payments in Canada and the Implications for the Demand for Cash Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2012 Carlos Arango, Kim Huynh, Ben Fung, Gerald Stuber Over the past 20 years, there has been a major shift away from the use of paper-based retail payment instruments, such as cash and cheques, toward electronic means of payment, such as debit cards and credit cards. Recent Bank of Canada research on consumers’ choice of payment instruments indicates that cash is frequently used for transactions with low values because of its speed, ease of use and wide acceptance, while debit and credit cards are more commonly used for transactions with higher values because of perceived attributes such as safety and record keeping. While innovations in retail payments currently being introduced into the Canadian marketplace could lead to a further reduction in the use of cash over the longer term, the implications for the use of cash of some of the structural and regulatory developments under way are less clear. Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C8, C83, E, E4, E42, G, G2, G28
The Impact of Retail Payment Innovations on Cash Usage Staff Working Paper 2012-14 Ben Fung, Kim Huynh, Leonard Sabetti Many predict that innovations in retail payment may render cash obsolete. We investigate this possibility in the context of recent payment innovations such as contactless-credit and stored-value cards. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C3, C35, C8, C83, E, E4, E41
What Matters in Determining Capital Surcharges for Systemically Important Financial Institutions? Staff Discussion Paper 2011-9 Céline Gauthier, Toni Gravelle, Xuezhi Liu, Moez Souissi One way of internalizing the externalities that each individual bank imposes on the rest of the financial system is to impose capital surcharges on them in line with their systemic importance. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C1, C15, C8, C81, E, E4, E44, G, G0, G01, G2, G21
How Do You Pay? The Role of Incentives at the Point-of-Sale Staff Working Paper 2011-23 Carlos Arango, Kim Huynh, Leonard Sabetti This paper uses discrete-choice models to quantify the role of consumer socioeconomic characteristics, payment instrument attributes, and transaction features on the probability of using cash, debit card, or credit card at the point-of-sale. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Bank notes, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): C, C3, C35, C8, C83, E, E4, E41
Understanding Systemic Risk: The Trade-Offs between Capital, Short-Term Funding and Liquid Asset Holdings Staff Working Paper 2010-29 Céline Gauthier, Zhongfang He, Moez Souissi We offer a multi-period systemic risk assessment framework with which to assess recent liquidity and capital regulatory requirement proposals in a holistic way. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C1, C15, C8, C81, E, E4, E44, G, G0, G01, G2, G21
Statistical Confidence Intervals for the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey Staff Discussion Paper 2010-7 Daniel de Munnik While a number of central banks publish their own business conditions indicators that rely on non-random sampling, knowledge about their statistical accuracy has been limited. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Central bank research, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C4, C46, C8, C81
Assembling a Real-Financial Micro-Dataset for Canadian Households Staff Working Paper 2010-6 Umar Faruqui The lack of consolidated Canadian micro data on household balance sheets and expenditures has been an important impediment to empirical research into real-financial linkages in the Canadian household sector. Our paper attempts to fill this data gap by merging household balance sheet data from the Canadian Financial Monitor survey with household expenditure data from the Survey of Household Spending. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): C, C8, C81, D, D1, D10
Macroprudential Regulation and Systemic Capital Requirements Staff Working Paper 2010-4 Céline Gauthier, Alfred Lehar, Moez Souissi In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is interest in reforming bank regulation such that capital requirements are more closely linked to a bank's contribution to the overall risk of the financial system. In our paper we compare alternative mechanisms for allocating the overall risk of a banking system to its member banks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C15, C8, C81, E, E4, E44, G, G2, G21
Computing the Accuracy of Complex Non-Random Sampling Methods: The Case of the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey Staff Working Paper 2009-10 Daniel de Munnik, David Dupuis, Mark Illing A number of central banks publish their own business conditions survey based on non-random sampling methods. The results of these surveys influence monetary policy decisions and thus affect expectations in financial markets. To date, however, no one has computed the statistical accuracy of these surveys because their respective non-random sampling method renders this assessment non-trivial. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): C, C4, C8, C81, C9, C90
Money and Credit Factors Staff Working Paper 2006-3 Paul Gilbert, Erik Meijer The authors introduce new measures of important underlying macroeconomic phenomena that affect the financial side of the economy. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, Monetary aggregates JEL Code(s): C, C4, C43, C8, C82, E, E5, E51