G21 - Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
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An Exploration of First Nations Reserves and Access to Cash
Adequate cash distribution is one the Bank of Canada’s core interests. Canadians’ ability to access cash influences the Bank’s thinking on issuing a central bank digital currency. We provide a perspective on these issues by exploring access of First Nations reserves to cash. -
Optimal Monetary and Macroprudential Policies
Optimal coordination of monetary and macroprudential policies implies higher risk weights on (safe) bonds any time that banks are required to hold additional capital buffers. Coordination also implies a somewhat tighter monetary-policy stance whenever such capital buffers are released. -
Update on housing market imbalances and household indebtedness
Exceptional strength in the housing market during the pandemic is underpinning Canada’s economic recovery. However, two key vulnerabilities—housing market imbalances and elevated household indebtedness—have intensified. -
Imperfect Banking Competition and Macroeconomic Volatility: A DSGE Framework
How do banks adjust their loan rate markup in response to macroeconomic shocks? -
COVID-19 Crisis: Lessons Learned for Future Policy Research
One year later, we review the events that took place in Canadian fixed-income markets at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis and propose potential policy research questions for future work. -
Market Concentration and Uniform Pricing: Evidence from Bank Mergers
We show that US banks price deposits almost uniformly across their branches and that this pricing practice is more important than increases in local market concentration in explaining the deposit rate dynamics following bank mergers. -
Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States
Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects. -
Safe Payments
In a cashless economy, would the private sector invest in the optimal level of safety in a deposit-based payment system? In general, because of externalities, the answer is no. While the private sector could over- or under-invest in safety, the government can use taxes or subsidies to correct private incentives. -
Security and convenience of a central bank digital currency
An anonymous token-based central bank digital currency (CBDC) would pose certain security risks to users. These risks arise from how balances are aggregated, from their transactional use and from the competition between suppliers of aggregation solutions.