Staff research

• An update on the Canadian money market mutual fund sector

  Staff Analytical Note 2025-25 Jabir Sandhu, Sofia Tchamova, Rishi Vala

  We examine the Canadian money market fund (MMF) sector and find that it has grown rapidly, holding a large share of treasury bills and commercial paper. Unlike in some other jurisdictions where investor outflows likely amplified stresses, Canadian MMFs experienced inflows during the March 2020 market turmoil.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Research Topic(s): Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial stability, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E4, E40, G, G0, G00, G01, G1, G2, G23

• BoC–BoE Sovereign Default Database: What’s new in 2025?

  Staff Analytical Note 2025-24 David Beers, Obiageri Ndukwe, Joe Berry

  The BoC–BoE database of sovereign debt defaults, published and updated annually by the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, provides comprehensive estimates of stocks of government obligations in default. The 2025 edition highlights a decline in the US-dollar value of sovereign debt in default and provides more data about defaults on China’s official loans.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Research Topic(s): Debt management, Development economics, Financial stability, International financial markets JEL Code(s): F, F3, F34, G, G1, G10, G14, G15

• Household balance sheets and mortgage payment shocks

  Staff Analytical Note 2025-23 Thomas Michael Pugh, Saarah Sheikh, Taylor Webley

  Household savings in Canada have increased significantly since 2019, especially among homeowners without a mortgage. We assess how savings buffers can mitigate households’ financial risk in relation to asset repricing, mortgage payment renewal and unemployment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Research Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial stability, Housing, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, E, E2, E21, G, G5, G51

• The increasing role of hedge funds in Government of Canada bond auctions

  Staff Analytical Note 2025-22 Adam Epp, Jeffrey Gao

  We find that the rise in Government of Canada debt issuance correlates to growing participation of hedge funds in bond auctions since 2020. This increased participation supports the cost-effective distribution of Canada’s debt, but it also represents a potential vulnerability because hedge funds have a greater flight risk than other investor types.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Research Topic(s): Debt management, Financial institutions, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): D, D4, D44, G, G1, G12, G2, G23, H, H6, H63

• Simulating the Resilience of the Canadian Banking Sector Under Stress: An Update of the Bank of Canada’s Top-Down Solvency Assessment Tool

  Technical Report No. 128 Omar Abdelrahman, David Xiao Chen, Cameron MacDonald, Adi Mordel, Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc

  We present a technical description of the Top-Down Solvency Assessment (TDSA) tool. As a solvency stress-testing tool, TDSA is used to assess the banking sector’s capital resilience to hypothetical future risk scenarios.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Research Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, C5, C52, C53, G, G1, G17, G2, G21, G28

• Credit Conditions, Inflation, and Unemployment

  Staff Working Paper 2025-26 Chao Gu, Janet Hua Jiang, Liang Wang

  We identify two channels that affect the relationship between inflation and unemployment. First, inflation lowers wages because unemployed suffer more from inflation than employed, generating a positive relationship. Second, inflation increases firms’ financing costs, generating a negative relationship. Improvements in firm financing conditions can induce the relationship to switch signs.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Inflation and prices, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E3, E31, E4, E44, E5, E51

• Financial Shocks and the Output Growth Distribution

  Staff Working Paper 2025-25 Francois-Michel Boire, Thibaut Duprey, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  This paper studies how financial shocks shape the distribution of output growth by introducing a quantile-augmented vector autoregression (QAVAR), which integrates quantile regressions into a structural VAR framework. The QAVAR preserves standard shock identification while delivering flexible, nonparametric forecasts of conditional moments and tail risk measures for gross domestic product.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Central bank research, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Financial stability, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G0, G01

• Short-Run and Long-Run News: Evidence from Giant Commodity Discoveries

  Staff Working Paper 2025-24 Jean-Paul L’Huillier, Kirill Shakhnov, Laure Simon

  Our understanding of news shocks is, to a large extent, based on studies that focus empirically on short-run news. This paper brings new insights by analyzing the effects of giant commodity discoveries, which typically materialize over the longer run.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E23, F, F3, F4, Q, Q3, Q33

• Perceived Unemployment Risks over Business Cycles

  Staff Working Paper 2025-23 William Du, Adrian Monninger, Xincheng Qiu, Tao Wang

  Aggregate consumption impacts of heightened job risks during recessions can arise either from ex-ante responses to the fear of unemployment or from ex-post consumption declines due to realized income losses. We use survey-based perceptions of job risk and actual labor market transitions to quantify the relative contributions of these two channels. We further show that belief stickiness limits the extent of ex-ante insurance against job risks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Labour markets, Monetary policy and uncertainty JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, E, E2, E21, E7, E71, G, G5, G51

• Dynamic Consumer Cash Inventory Model

  Staff Working Paper 2025-22 Kim Huynh, Oleksandr Shcherbakov, André Stenzel

  We study consumer cash inventory behavior by developing a dynamic model of forward-looking consumers and estimating structural parameters of the model using detailed consumer survey data. Consumers facing holding and withdrawal costs solve a discrete-time continuous-control dynamic programming problem to optimally use cash at the point of sale.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Bank notes, Digital currencies and fintech, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D14, E, E4, E41, E42, G, G2, G21