G - Financial Economics

• Regulatory Constraints on Bank Leverage: Issues and Lessons from the Canadian Experience

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-15 Étienne Bordeleau, Allan Crawford, Christopher Graham

  The Basel capital framework plays an important role in risk management by linking a bank's minimum capital requirements to the riskiness of its assets. Nevertheless, the risk estimates underlying these calculations may be imperfect, and it appears that a cyclical bias in measures of risk-adjusted capital contributed to procyclical increases in global leverage prior to the recent financial crisis.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): G, G0, G01, G2, G21, G28

• 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

• Network Analysis and Canada's Large Value Transfer System

  Staff Discussion Paper 2009-13 Lana Embree, Tom Roberts

  Analysis of the characteristics and structure of a network of financial institutions can provide insight into the complex relationships and interdependencies that exist in a payment, clearing, and settlement system (PCSS), and allow an intuitive understanding of the PCSS's efficiency, stability, and resiliency.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): D, D8, D85, G, G1, G10

• 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

• Cross-border Mergers and Hollowing-out

  Staff Working Paper 2009-30 Oana Secrieru, Marianne Vigneault

  The purpose of our paper is to examine the profitability and social desirability of both domestic and foreign mergers in a location-quantity competition model, where we allow for the possibility of hollowing-out of the target firm. We refer to hollowing-out as the situation where the target firm is shut down following a merger with a domestic or foreign acquirer.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, International topics, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, D43, G, G3, G34, L, L1, L13, L4, L41

• Short Changed? The Market's Reaction to the Short Sale Ban of 2008

  Staff Working Paper 2009-23 Louis Gagnon, Jonathan Witmer

  Do short sales restrictions have an impact on security prices? We address this question in the context of a natural experiment surrounding the short sale ban of 2008 using a comprehensive sample of Canadian stocks cross-listed in the U.S.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F3, F30, G, G0, G01, G1, G18, G2, G20

• The Equity Premium and the Volatility Spread: The Role of Risk-Neutral Skewness

  Staff Working Paper 2009-20 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Roméo Tedongap

  We introduce the Homoscedastic Gamma [HG] model where the distribution of returns is characterized by its mean, variance and an independent skewness parameter under both measures. The model predicts that the spread between historical and risk-neutral volatilities is a function of the risk premium and of skewness.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13

• Testing for Financial Contagion with Applications to the Canadian Banking System

  Staff Working Paper 2009-14 Fuchun Li

  The author proposes a new test for financial contagion based on a non-parametric measure of the cross-market correlation. The test does not depend on the assumption that the data are drawn from a given probability distribution; therefore, it allows for maximal flexibility in fitting into the data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, G, G0, G01, G1, G15

• Price Movements in the Canadian Residential Mortgage Market

  Staff Working Paper 2009-13 Jason Allen, Darcey McVanel

  The authors empirically analyze the price-setting behaviour of the major Canadian banks in the residential mortgage market over the period 1991–2007. They use weekly posted prices of the major mortgage providers to study the degree of competition in mortgage price setting.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2

• Complex Ownership and Capital Structure

  Staff Working Paper 2009-12 Teodora Paligorova, Zhaoxia Xu

  This paper investigates the impact of pyramid ownership structure and multiple controlling shareholders on firm leverage. Pyramids, having at least one controlling shareholder and a subsidiary, rely significantly more on debt financing than non-pyramid firms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G3, G31, G32