Financial markets

• International Capital Flows and Bond Risk Premia

  Staff Working Paper 2010-14 Jesus Sierra

  This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, F, F3, F31, F32, F34, G, G1, G11, G12, G15

• Idiosyncratic Coskewness and Equity Return Anomalies

  Staff Working Paper 2010-11 Fousseni Chabi-Yo, Jun Yang

  In this paper, we show that in a model where investors have heterogeneous preferences, the expected return of risky assets depends on the idiosyncratic coskewness beta, which measures the co-movement of the individual stock variance and the market return.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G11, G12, G14, G3, G33

• Market Expectations and Option Prices: Evidence for the Can$/US$ Exchange Rate

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-2 Alejandro García, Andrei Prokopiw

  Security prices contain valuable information that can be used to make a wide variety of economic decisions. To extract this information, a model is required that relates market prices to the desired information, and that ideally can be implemented using timely and low-cost methods.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C0, C00, C02, G, G1, G13

• Corporate Risk Taking and Ownership Structure

  Staff Working Paper 2010-3 Teodora Paligorova

  This paper investigates the determinants of corporate risk taking. Shareholders with substantial equity ownership in a single company may advocate conservative investment policies due to greater exposure to firm risk.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G3, G31, G34

• Search Frictions and Asset Price Volatility

  Staff Working Paper 2010-1 B. Ravikumar, Enchuan Shao

  We examine the quantitative effect of search frictions in product markets on asset price volatility. We combine several features from Shi (1997) and Lagos and Wright (2002) in a model without money. Households prefer special goods and general goods.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, G, G1, G12

• Market Timing of Long-Term Debt Issuance

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-14 Jonathan Witmer

  The literature on market timing of long-term debt issuance yields mixed evidence that managers can successfully time their debt-maturity issuance. The early results that are indicative of debt-maturity timing are not robust to accounting for structural breaks or to other measures of debt maturity from firm-level data that account for call and put provisions in […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G3, G30, G38

• Real Time Detection of Structural Breaks in GARCH Models

  Staff Working Paper 2009-31 Zhongfang He, John M. Maheu

  A sequential Monte Carlo method for estimating GARCH models subject to an unknown number of structural breaks is proposed. Particle filtering techniques allow for fast and efficient updates of posterior quantities and forecasts in real time.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, C15, C2, C22, C5, C53
• November 11, 2009

  The Evolution of Capital Flows to Emerging-Market Economies

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2009-2010 Lena Suchanek, Garima Vasishtha

  Many emerging-market economies (EMEs) have significantly improved their macroeconomic fundamentals and undergone structural reforms since the Asian crisis. These developments have enhanced the composition of capital flows to EMEs through an improved debt structure, a larger share of capital flows as foreign direct investment, and greater access to international debt markets for corporations in EMEs. Structural changes in the global financial landscape have also increased capital flows, bringing economic and financial benefits to EMEs. During the recent financial crisis, however, the opening up of capital accounts and increased financial and trade linkages left many countries vulnerable to external disruptions. Countries with sound fundamentals have weathered the crisis relatively well. Policy-makers in EMEs need to implement policies that support capital flows and ensure that controls imposed to deal with detrimental outflows during periods of stress or rapid inflows are only temporary.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Development economics, Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies

• Measures of Aggregate Credit Conditions and Their Potential Use by Central Banks

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-12 Alejandro García, Andrei Prokopiw

  Understanding the nature of credit risk has important implications for financial stability. Since authorities – notably, central banks – focus on risks that have systemic implications, it is crucial to develop ways to measure these risks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12, G13

• Bond Liquidity Premia

  Staff Working Paper 2009-28 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, René Garcia

  Recent asset pricing models of limits to arbitrage emphasize the role of funding conditions faced by financial intermediaries. In the US, the repo market is the key funding market. Then, the premium of on-the-run U.S. Treasury bonds should share a common component with risk premia in other markets.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, H, H1, H12