August 9, 1995
Credit and credit aggregates, Lender of last resort, Monetary and financial indicators, Financial institutions, Financial markets, International financial markets, Monetary policy implementation, Financial system regulation and policies, Financial services, Financial stability, Market structure and pricing, Payment clearing and settlement systems
-
-
December 9, 1994
The term structure of interest rates as a leading indicator of economic activity: A technical note
The spread between long-term and short-term interest rates has proven to be an excellent predictor of changes of economic activity in Canada. As a general rule, when long-term interest rates have been much above short-term rates, strong increases in output have followed within about a year; however, whenever the yield curve has been inverted for any extended period of time, a recession has followed. Similar findings exist for other countries, including the United States. But although Canadian and U.S. interest rates generally move quite closely together, the Canadian yield curve has been distinctly better at predicting future Canadian output. The explanation given for this result is that the term spread has reflected both current monetary conditions, which affect short-term interest rates, and expected real returns on investment and expectations of inflation, which are the main determinants of long-term rates. This article is mainly a summary of econometric work done at the Bank. It also touches on some of the extensive recent literature in this area. -
December 7, 1994
Repo, reverse repo and securities lending markets in Canada
Repurchase agreements (repos), reverse repos and securities lending markets permit a variety of institutions to conduct a broad range of financial transactions efficiently. In addition, they allow financial market participants to augment the returns on their cash holdings and securities portfolios. Canadian repo and securities lending markets have grown rapidly in recent years, following the expansion of such markets in major financial centres around the world; the volume of transactions in Canada now averages between $35 billion and $50 billion per day. The author notes that structural and regulatory changes in Canada have played important roles in promoting this growth. The vast majority of repo and securities lending transactions involve securities issued by the Government of Canada—principally Government of Canada bonds. -
The Term Structure and Real Activity in Canada
This paper examines the predictive content of the term structure of interest rates for economic activity in Canada. Recent papers for the United States and other countries find that the slope of the term structure is a very good predictor of output growth. -
The Microstructure of Financial Derivatives Markets: Exchange-Traded versus Over-the-Counter
In this report the author focusses on the microstructure of derivatives markets. While the primary objective is to examine derivatives markets in Canada, the author also discusses certain developments in global derivatives markets that are bound to influence the functioning and development of financial markets in a small, open economy such as Canada's. It is […] -
Optimum Currency Areas and Shock Asymmetry: A Comparison of Europe and the United States
Since the early 1980s, models based on economic fundamentals have been poor at explaining the movements in the exchange rate (Messe 1990). In response to this problem, Frankel and Froot (1988) developed a model that uses two approaches to forecast the exchange rate: the fundamentalist approach, which bases the forecast on economic fundamentals, and the chartist approach, which bases the forecast on the past behaviour of the exchange rate. -
Tests of Market Efficiency in the One-Week When-Issued Market for Government of Canada Treasury Bills
This report presents different tests of market efficiency in the when- issued market for Government of Canada treasury bills and examines the effectiveness, in this market, of Bank operations over the 1986 to mid- 1992 period. The when-issued market, which is a combination of a forward and futures market, enables market participants to buy or […] -
The Development of Financial Derivatives Markets: The Canadian Experience
In response to an intense demand for risk management services since the early 1980s, the over-the-counter (OTC) markets for financial derivatives in Canada have developed more vigorously than those for exchange-traded (EXT) derivative securities. This is particularly evident for interest rate derivatives. The objectives of this paper are to examine why Canadian interest rate derivatives […] -
An Analysis of the Information Content of Alternative Credit Aggregates
This study evaluates the information content of 25 measures of credit with respect to three macroeconomic variables—nominal spending, real spending and prices. Initially, simple descriptive techniques are used to assess the contemporaneous and leading relationships between the credit aggregates and the three goal variables. Next, bivariate vector autoregression models are constructed by regressing each of […] -
Regulation of Financial Institutions: A Functional Analysis
This study has three main objectives: First, to examine the reasons for the existence of financial institutions that simultaneously lend to one group and borrow from another; second, to analyze the reasons for the special treatment of these institutions in terms of the regulation that governs their activities; and third, to assess the types of […]