G - Financial Economics

• Examining Simple Joint Macroeconomic and Term-Structure Models: A Practitioner's Perspective

  Staff Working Paper 2007-49 David Bolder, Shudan Liu

  The primary objective of this paper is to compare a variety of joint models of the term structure of interest rates and the macroeconomy.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Interest rates JEL Code(s): C, C0, C6, E, E4, G, G1

• Hedge Funds and Financial Stability: The State of the Debate

  Staff Discussion Paper 2007-9 Michael R. King, Philipp Maier

  The authors review the state of the debate on hedge funds and the potential threat that hedge funds pose to financial stability. The collapse of a hedge fund or a group of hedge funds might pose a systemic risk directly by damaging systematically important financial institutions, or indirectly by increasing market volatility and generating a […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): G, G1, G15, G18, G2

• Estimating and Comparing the Implied Cost of Equity for Canadian and U.S. Firms

  Staff Working Paper 2007-48 Jonathan Witmer, Lorie Zorn

  This paper estimates the implied cost of equity for Canadian and U.S. firms using a methodology based on the dividend discount model and utilizing firms' current stock price and analysts' forecasted earnings.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G3, G30, G38

• A Note on Contestability in the Canadian Banking Industry

  Staff Discussion Paper 2007-7 Jason Allen, Ying Liu

  The authors examine the degree of contestability in the Canadian banking system using the H-statistic proposed by Panzar and Rosse (1987) and modified by Bikker, Spierdijk, and Finnie (2006). A modification is necessary because the standard approach of controlling for size using total assets leads to an upward bias in the H-statistic. The authors propose […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions JEL Code(s): G, G2, G21, L, L1, L11

• Implications of Asymmetry Risk for Portfolio Analysis and Asset Pricing

  Staff Working Paper 2007-47 Fousseni Chabi-Yo, Dietmar Leisen, Eric Renault

  Asymmetric shocks are common in markets; securities' payoffs are not normally distributed and exhibit skewness. This paper studies the portfolio holdings of heterogeneous agents with preferences over mean, variance and skewness, and derives equilibrium prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, D, D5, D58, G, G1, G11, G12

• Cyclical Behavior of Debt and Equity Using a Panel of Canadian Firms

  Staff Working Paper 2007-44 Francisco Covas, Wouter den Haan

  We document the cyclical behavior of debt, equity, and retained earnings for different firm categories using firm-level Canadian data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, G, G3, G32

• Price Discovery in Canadian and U.S. 10-Year Government Bond Markets

  Staff Working Paper 2007-43 Bryan Campbell, Scott Hendry

  This paper presents some new results on the price discovery process in both the Canadian and U.S. 10-year Government bond markets using high-frequency data not previously analyzed. Using techniques introduced by Hasbrouck (1995) and Gonzalo-Granger (1995), we look at the relative information content of cash and futures prices in the market for Canadian Government bonds using futures market data from the Montreal Exchange and OTC cash market data reflecting the inter-dealer market covered by CanPx.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13, G14

• Family Values: Ownership Structure, Performance and Capital Structure of Canadian Firms

  Staff Working Paper 2007-40 Michael R. King, Eric Santor

  This study examines how family ownership affects the performance and capital structure of 613 Canadian firms using a panel dataset from 1998 to 2005.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G15

• Unanticipated Defaults and Losses in Canada's Large-Value Payments System, Revisited

  Staff Discussion Paper 2007-5 Devin Ball, Walter Engert

  Recent work at the Bank of Canada studied the impact of default in Canada’s large-value payments system, and concluded that participants could readily manage their potential losses (McVanel 2005). In an extension of that work, the authors use a much larger set of daily payments data – with three times as many observations – to […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, E47, G, G2, G21

• Vulnerabilities in Defined-Benefit Pension Plans

  Staff Discussion Paper 2007-3 Jack Selody

  An effective pension system enhances economic and financial efficiency. A majority of pension plans in Canada are defined-benefit (DB) plans, but DB plans are under stress from increasing longevity, low long-term interest rates, and the shrinking equity premium. DB plans are vulnerable to such shocks because they are complex financial vehicles, with interdependencies not fully […]

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions JEL Code(s): G, G2, G23