G12 - Asset Pricing; Trading volume; Bond Interest Rates

• Borrowing Costs for Government of Canada Treasury Bills

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-28 Jessica Lee, Jabir Sandhu, Adrian Walton

  The cost of borrowing Government of Canada treasury bills (t-bills) in the repurchase (repo) market is mainly explained by the relationship between the parties involved. Some pairs of parties conduct most of their repos for t-bills rather than bonds, and at relatively high borrowing costs. We speculate that these pairs have formed a mutually beneficial service relationship in which one party consistently receives t-bills, while the other receives cash at a relatively cheap rate.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G11, G12, G2, G20, G21, G23, G3, G32

• Bridging Canadian Business Lending and Market-Based Risk Measures

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-26 Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc, Maxime Leboeuf

  Lending to business is central to economic growth because it supports investment by firms. Knowing how market participants view risk in the financial system can give the Bank of Canada information about future growth in business loans. In this note, we look at three market-based risk measures and find that sudden increases in the perception of risk in the Canadian banking system are associated with a weaker outlook for business loans and real gross domestic product.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Financial markets JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, E4, E44, G, G1, G12

• Using Exchange-Traded Funds to Measure Liquidity in the Canadian Corporate Bond Market

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-25 Rohan Arora, Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc, Jabir Sandhu, Jun Yang

  We introduce a new proxy for measuring corporate bond liquidity, using the price of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold corporate bonds. It measures the average liquidity across 900 corporate bonds every day, many more than other proxies used in previous Bank of Canada analysis. The new proxy nonetheless paints a very similar picture of liquidity conditions and confirms the previous findings: the liquidity of bonds has generally improved since 2010.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14

• Relative Value of Government of Canada Bonds

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-23 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Jabir Sandhu, Adrian Walton

  Government of Canada bonds in circulation that promise very similar payoffs can have different prices. We study the reason for these differences. Bonds that trade more often and earn high rental income in the repurchase agreement (repo) market tend to have higher prices. Bonds with longer tenors and times to maturity tend to have lower prices. This contrast between cheap and expensive bonds is important because trading volume and rental income can change rapidly, unlike tenor and time to maturity, which are stable.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G11, G12, G2, G23, G3, G32

• Bond Funds and Fixed-Income Market Liquidity: A Stress-Testing Approach

  Technical Report No. 115 Rohan Arora, Guillaume Bédard-Pagé, Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc, Ryan Shotlander

  This report provides a detailed technical description of a stress test model for investment funds called Ceto.

  Content Type(s): Technical Reports Topic(s): Economic models, Financial Institutions, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14, G2, G20, G23

• Do Survey Expectations of Stock Returns Reflect Risk Adjustments?

  Staff Working Paper 2019-11 Klaus Adam, Dmitry Matveev, Stefan Nagel

  Motivated by the observation that survey expectations of stock returns are inconsistent with rational return expectations under real-world probabilities, we investigate whether alternative expectations hypotheses entertained in the literature on asset pricing are consistent with the survey evidence.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Asset Pricing, Economic models, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12

• Price Caps in Canadian Bond Borrowing Markets

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-2 Léanne Berger-Soucy, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Adrian Walton

  Price controls, or caps, can lead to shortages, as 1970’s gasoline price controls illustrate. One million trades show that the market for borrowing bonds in Canada has an implicit price cap: traders are willing to pay no more than the overnight interest rate to borrow a bond. This suggests the probability of a shortage increases when interest rates are very low.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12

• The Secular Decline of Forecasted Interest Rates

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-1 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine

  Canadian interest rates show a secular decline since the 1980s. Long-term survey-based forecasts of interest rates also declined, but less so and were more gradual. Our model-based estimates show an endpoint shifting over time in three phases: a decline between 1990 and 1995, a period of stability between 1996 and 2007, and a further decline since 2008. The current endpoint estimate remains clouded with uncertainty; this is an active area of research.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, G, G1, G12

• Alternative Futures for Government of Canada Debt Management

  Staff Discussion Paper 2018-15 Corey Garriott, Sophie Lefebvre, Guillaume Nolin, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Adrian Walton

  This paper presents four blue-sky ideas for lowering the cost of the Government of Canada’s debt without increasing the debt’s risk profile. We argue that each idea would improve the secondary-market liquidity of government debt, thereby increasing the demand for government bonds and thus lowering their cost at issuance.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Debt Management, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G2, G24, H, H6, H63

• The Impact of Surprising Monetary Policy Announcements on Exchange Rate Volatility

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-39 Adam Albogatchiev, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Jabir Sandhu, Reginald Xie

  We identify a few Bank of Canada press releases that had the largest immediate impact on the exchange rate market. We find that volatility increases after these releases, but the effect is short-lived and mostly dissipates after the first hour, on average. Beyond the first hour, the size of the effect is similar to what we observe for other economic releases, such as those for inflation or economic growth data.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets, Monetary Policy JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, F, F3, F31, G, G1, G10, G12, G14, G15