October 11, 2024
Staff research, Publications
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October 11, 2024
Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations—Third Quarter of 2024
Consumers’ perceptions of current inflation and their expectations for inflation over the next year have declined this quarter, although they remain higher than they were before the COVID‑19 pandemic. Perceptions of financial stress have improved. And, given recent interest rate cuts and lower inflation, fewer consumers reported reducing their spending. However, consumers expect interest rates to remain elevated, which is affecting their spending decisions. Perceptions of the labour market have weakened further, with young consumers reporting a more pronounced deterioration than others. Still, overall, job prospects are close to survey averages. -
An Anatomy of Firms’ Political Speech
We study the distribution of political speech across U.S. firms. We develop a measure of political engagement based on firms’ communications (earning calls, regulatory filings, and social media) by training a large language model to identify statements that contain political opinions. Using these data, we document five facts about firms’ political engagement. -
Consumer Credit Regulation and Lender Market Power
We investigate the welfare consequences of consumer credit regulation in a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model with endogenous lender market power. Lenders post credit offers and borrowers—some informed and others uninformed—apply for credit. We calibrate the model to match characteristics of the unsecured consumer credit market and use the calibrated model to evaluate interest rate ceilings. -
Public and Private Money Creation for Distributed Ledgers: Stablecoins, Tokenized Deposits, or Central Bank Digital Currencies?
This paper explores the implications of introducing digital public and private monies (e.g. tokenized central bank digital currency [CBDC] or tokenized deposits) for stablecoins and illicit crypto transactions. -
Estimating the Portfolio-Balance Effects of the Bank of Canada’s Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program
Using a novel dynamic portfolio balance model of the yield curve for Government of Canada bonds, I find that the Bank of Canada’s Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program reduced Canadian 10-year and 5-year zero-coupon yields by 84 and 52 basis points, respectively. -
Evaluating the portfolio balance effects of the Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program on the Canadian yield curve
The Bank of Canada’s Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program, launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, lowered the weighted average maturity of the Government of Canada’s debt by approximately 1.4 years. This in turn reduced Canadian 10-year and 5-year zero-coupon yields by 84 and 52 basis points, respectively. -
Digital Payments: A Framework for Inclusive Design
We propose a framework for designing cognitively accessible payment and banking interfaces through design guidelines, testing and proposed measures to optimize system learnability and user workload. We include, as a case study, the results of testing this framework with users with cognitive disabilities, using a prototype system for voice payments.