Central counterparties can make over-the-counter markets more resilient and reduce systemic risk by mitigating and managing counterparty credit risk. These benefits are maximized when access to central counterparties is available to a wide range of market participants. In an over-the-counter market, there is an important trade-off between risk and competition. A model of an over-the-counter market shows how risk and competition could be influenced by the incentives of market participants as they move to central clearing. In a centrally cleared market, there may be less risk when participation is high. This helps to explain why regulators have put in place requirements for fair, open and risk-based access criteria.
Topics: Financial markets; Financial system regulation and policies; Market structure and pricingThis paper measures market power in a decentralized market where contracts are determined through a search and negotiation process. The mortgage industry has many institutional features which suggest competitiveness: homogeneous contracts, negotiable rates, and, for a given consumer, common lending costs across lenders.
Topics: Financial Institutions; Financial services; Market structure and pricingCan regulation solve problems arising from a natural monopoly? This paper analyzes whether “unbundling,” referring to regulations that enforce sharing of natural monopolistic infrastructure, prevents entrants from building new infrastructure.
Topics: Market structure and pricing; ProductivityRecent reform proposals call for an elimination of the constant net asset value (NAV) or “buck” in money market mutual funds to reduce the occurrence of runs. Outside the United States, there are several countries that have money market mutual funds with and without constant NAVs.
Topics: Financial markets; Financial stability; Market structure and pricingThis paper studies the sensitivity of Canadian producer prices to the Canada-U.S. exchange rate. Using a unique product-level price data set, we estimate and analyze the impact of movements in the exchange rate on both domestic and export producer prices.
Topics: Exchange rates; Inflation and prices; Market structure and pricingThis article draws on theory and empirical evidence to examine a number of factors behind movements in Canadian house prices. It begins with an overview of the movements in house prices in Canada, using regional data to highlight factors that influence prices over the long run. It then turns to the central theme, that there are medium-run movements in prices not accounted for by long-run factors. Drawing on recent Bank of Canada research, the article discusses several factors behind these medium-run movements, including interest rates, expected price appreciation and market liquidity. The article concludes by identifying areas for future research that would further our understanding of fluctuations in house prices.
Topics: Asset Pricing; Econometric and statistical methods; Market structure and pricingConsumers often purchase more than one differentiated product, assembling a portfolio, which might potentially affect substitution patterns of demand and, as a consequence, oligopolistic firms’ pricing strategies.
Topics: Economic models; Market structure and pricingWe examine nine changes in the New York State Security Transaction Taxes (STT) between 1932 and 1981. We find that imposing or increasing an STT results in wider bidask spreads, lower volume, and increased price impact of trades.
Topics: Econometric and statistical methods; Financial markets; Market structure and pricingThis article focuses on the role that loans backed by housing collateral play in amplifying housing booms and, more generally, procyclicality in the housing market. The author uses a model developed to include borrower and lender households, as well as a housing market, to examine the impact that altering the loan-to-value ratio (either permanently or countercyclically) might have on the volatility of house prices and mortgage debt.
Topics: Economic models; Financial system regulation and policies; Market structure and pricingThis paper empirically examines how dispersions across investors beliefs influence traders order submission decisions in the foreign exchange market. Previous research has found that dispersion in traders beliefs regarding future macroeconomic announcements has a significant impact on both price dynamics and trading volume before the announcements in the foreign exchange and other financial markets.
Topics: Exchange rates; Market structure and pricingThis article begins with a brief examination of the Canadian mortgage market, focusing on the market’s evolution following changes to the Bank Act in 1992, which allowed chartered banks to enter the trust business, and the subsequent entrance of virtual banks and mortgage brokers. It then summarizes key research currently being undertaken by the Bank of Canada. This research suggests that the mortgage rates paid by borrowers depend on their observable characteristics, their local market, and their bargaining ability. Results also imply that mortgage-rate discounting affects the speed and amount of pass-through of changes in the central bank’s policy rate to mortgage rates. Findings also suggest that bank mergers can lead to asymmetric effects on mortgage rates.
Topics: Interest rates; Market structure and pricing; Transmission of monetary policyThe recent financial crisis has highlighted the importance of adverse selection as a contributing factor to financial market instability. In this article, the author examines the phenomenon of adverse selection and explains how its presence in a particular market can lead to market freezes and liquidity hoarding. She also describes several mechanisms that can propagate the initially small effect of adverse selection to the entire financial system. Possible policy responses and their effectiveness are also discussed.
Topics: Financial stability; Financial system regulation and policies; Market structure and pricingExisting studies show that U.S. Treasury bond price changes are mainly driven by public information shocks, as manifested in macroeconomic news announcements and events. The literature also shows that heterogeneous private information contributes significantly to price discovery for U.S. Treasury securities.
Topics: Financial markets; Market structure and pricingIn many industries, firms usually have two choices when expanding into new markets: They can either build a new plant (greenfield entry) or they can acquire an existing incumbent. In the U.S. cement industry, the comparative advantage (e.g., TFP or size) of entrants versus incumbents and regulatory entry barriers are important factors that determine the means of expansion.
Topics: Econometric and statistical methods; Market structure and pricing; ProductivityIn 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.
Topics: Exchange rates; Market structure and pricing; ProductivityIn 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.
Topics: Exchange rates; Market structure and pricing; ProductivityBased on recent research, this article discusses three ways that oil-futures prices can improve our understanding of current conditions and future prospects in the global market for crude oil. First, the response of the oil-futures curve can be used to identify the persistence of oil-price shocks and to obtain an indicator of the rate at which they will diminish. Second, the spread between the current futures price and the spot price of oil can be interpreted as an indicator of the precautionary demand for oil. Third, because oil-futures prices are volatile, forecasts of the future spot price of oil using futures prices should be supplemented with other information to improve their accuracy.
Topics: Econometric and statistical methods; Market structure and pricingWe 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.
Topics: Financial markets; Market structure and pricingThe 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.
Topics: Economic models; International topics; Market structure and pricingUsing a rich sample of Canadian government securities auctions, we estimate the structural parameters of a share-auction model accounting for asymmetries across bidders. We find little evidence of asymmetries between participants at Canadian government nominal bond auctions.
Topics: Debt Management; Financial markets; Market structure and pricingAccess to information about the future direction of the exchange rate can be extremely valuable in the foreign exchange market. Evidence presented in this article suggests that Canadian dealers are more likely to provide interday liquidity to foreign, rather than Canadian, financial customers, since foreign financial flows can be more informative about future movements in the exchange rate. The author reveals a statistical relationship between the supply of liquidity provided by non-financial firms and that provided by dealing institutions across time, and across markets, and suggests that the relationship between the positions of commercial clients and market-makers, and the role played by dealers in interday liquidity provision, has been understated in the market microstructure literature.
Topics: Exchange rates; Financial Institutions; Financial markets; Market structure and pricingThis paper illustrates that dealers in foreign exchange markets not only provide intraday liquidity, they are key participants in the provision of overnight liquidity. Dealing institutions receive compensation for holding undesired inventory balances in part from the information they receive in customer trades. These flows can be used to forecast future movements in the exchange [...]
Topics: Exchange rates; Financial markets; Market structure and pricingThis paper studies the role that market structure plays in affecting the diffusion of electronic banking. Electronic banking (and electronic commerce more generally) reduces the cost of performing many types of transactions for firms. The full benefits for firms from adoption, however, only accrue once consumers begin to perform a significant share of their transactions [...]
Topics: Financial Institutions; Market structure and pricingThe early work of Tobin (1958) showed that portfolio allocation decisions can be reduced to a two stage process: first decide the relative allocation of assets across the risky assets, and second decide how to divide total wealth between the risky assets and the safe asset. This so called twofund separation relies on special assumptions [...]
Topics: Financial markets; Market structure and pricingThe ongoing process of price discovery in foreign exchange markets provides valuable information to certain market participants. Recent empirical findings suggest that aggregate measures of order flow convey information about the fundamental value of the exchange rate. Using a market microstructure approach, D'Souza reports on a two-year study of completed transactions within the Canadian and Australian exchange rate markets to examine the relationship between exchange rate returns and trades initiated in different locations. Based on the information content of the trades, he finds that geographic location and hours of operation are two of the factors driving informed interdealer trading.
Topics: Exchange rates; Financial markets; Market structure and pricing
