D - Microeconomics

• Composition of International Capital Flows: A Survey

  Staff Working Paper 2010-33 Koralai Kirabaeva, Assaf Razin

  We survey several key mechanisms that explain the composition of international capital flows: foreign direct investment, foreign portfolio investment and debt flows (bank loans and bonds). In particular, we focus on the following market frictions: asymmetric information in capital markets and exposure to liquidity shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, F, F2, F21, F3, F34

• Adverse Selection, Liquidity, and Market Breakdown

  Staff Working Paper 2010-32 Koralai Kirabaeva

  This paper studies the interaction between adverse selection, liquidity risk and beliefs about systemic risk in determining market liquidity, asset prices and welfare. Even a small amount of adverse selection in the asset market can lead to fire-sale pricing and possibly to a market breakdown if it is accompanied by a flight-to-liquidity, a misassessment of systemic risk, or uncertainty about asset values.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, G, G0, G01, G1, G11

• Stability versus Flexibility: The Role of Temporary Employment in Labour Adjustment

  Staff Working Paper 2010-27 Shutao Cao, Danny Leung

  In Canada, temporary workers account for 14 per cent of jobs in the non-farm business sector, are present in a range of industries, and account for 40 per cent of the total job reallocation. Yet most models of job reallocation abstract from temporary workers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D24, J, J3, J32

• The Effect of Exchange Rate Movements on Heterogeneous Plants: A Quantile Regression Analysis

  Staff Working Paper 2010-25 Ben Tomlin, Loretta Fung

  In this paper, we examine how the effect of movements in the real exchange rate on manufacturing plants depends on the plant's placement within the productivity distribution. Appreciations of the local currency expose domestic plants to more competition from abroad as export opportunities shrink and import competition intensifies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Market structure and pricing, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D21, F, F1, L, L1, L16, L6, L60

• Liquidity Transformation and Bank Capital Requirements

  Staff Working Paper 2010-22 Hajime Tomura

  This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model where asymmetric information about asset quality leads to asset illiquidity. Banking arises endogenously in this environment as banks can pool illiquid assets to average out their idiosyncratic qualities and issue liquid liabilities backed by pooled assets whose total quality is public information.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, E, E4, E44, G, G2, G21

• Exchange Rate Fluctuations, Plant Turnover and Productivity

  Staff Working Paper 2010-18 Ben Tomlin

  In a small open economy fluctuations in the real exchange rate can affect plant turnover, and thus aggregate productivity, by altering the makeup of plants that populate the market. An appreciation of the local currency increases the level of competition in the domestic market as import competition intensifies and export opportunities shrink, forcing less productive plants from the market and compelling new entrants to be more competitive than they otherwise would have been.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Market structure and pricing, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D21, D24, L, L1, L11

• Estimating the Structure of the Payment Network in the LVTS: An Application of Estimating Communities in Network Data

  Staff Working Paper 2010-13 James Chapman, Nellie Zhang

  In the Canadian large value payment system an important goal is to understand how liquidity is transferred through the system and hence how efficient the system is in settling payments. Understanding the structure of the underlying network of relationships between participants in the payment system is a crucial step in achieving the goal.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): C, C1, C11, D, D8, D85, G, G2, G20

• 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

• Labour Reallocation, Relative Prices and Productivity

  Staff Working Paper 2010-2 Shutao Cao, Danny Leung

  This paper documents the rate at which labour flows between industries and between firms within industries using the most recent data available. It examines the determinants of these flows and their relationship with the productivity growth.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D23, E, E3, E32, J, J6