Bio

Heng Chen is a Research Advisor in the Currency Department at the Bank of Canada. His primary research interests center on understanding cash demand and usage through surveys and casual inference. Heng Chen received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University.

Research Field(s): Payments Economics

Staff research

Correcting Selection Bias in a Non-Probability Two-Phase Payment Survey

Staff working paper 2025-17 Heng Chen, John Tsang
We develop statistical inferences for a non-probability two-phase survey sample when relevant auxiliary information is available from a probability survey sample. The proposed method is assessed by simulation studies and used to analyze a non-probability two phase payment survey.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C8, C83 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Money and payments, Retail payments

Incorporating Trip-Chaining to Measuring Canadians’ Access to Cash

Staff working paper 2025-16 Heng Chen, Hongyu Xiao
Our paper employs smartphone data to construct an improved cash access metric by accounting for both spatial agglomeration and households’ travel patterns. We find that incorporating trip-chaining into the travel metric could show that travel costs are from 15 to 25% less than not incorporating trip-chaining and that the biggest decrease is driven by rural residents.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, O, O1, O18, R, R2, R22, R4, R41 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Cash and bank notes

Canadians’ access to cash in 2023

Staff analytical note 2025-13 Heng Chen, Hongyu Xiao, Daneal O’Habib, Stephen Wild
This study updates our measure of Canadians' access to cash through automated banking machines and financial institution branches. We find that in 2023 overall access to cash remains stable, while rural Canadians continue having less access.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): J, J1, J15, O, O1, R, R5, R51 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Cash and bank notes

Low Response Rate from Merchants? Sample and Ask Consumers! An Application of Indirect Sampling Under a Consumer-Merchant Bipartite Network

Technical report No. 126 Heng Chen, Joy Wu
Under the consumer-merchant bipartite network, we apply the indirect sampling approach to estimate merchant payment acceptance through a consumer payment diary.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports JEL Code(s): C, C8, C80, C83, E, E5 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Money and payments, Retail payments

How do Canadians perceive access to cash?

Staff analytical note 2024-24 Heng Chen, Daneal O’Habib, Hongyu Xiao
This paper introduces a subjective measure of cash accessibility in Canada, complementing existing distance-based metrics developed by Chen, O’Habib and Xiao (2023). Analyzing data from the 2023 Methods-of-Payment Survey, this study explores how Canadians perceive their ease of accessing cash from automated banking machines (ABMs) and financial institution branches.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes JEL Code(s): J, J1, J15, O, O1, R, R5, R51 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Cash and bank notes

How Far Do Canadians Need to Travel to Access Cash?

Staff discussion paper 2023-28 Heng Chen, Daneal O’Habib, Hongyu Xiao
This paper develops a travel-based metric to measure Canadians’ access to cash from automated banking machines (ABMs) and financial institution branches. We find that, overall, access to cash remained stable between 2019 and 2022. The total number of ABMs in Canada increased by 3.7% and the total number of branches decreased by 5.2% during that period.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers JEL Code(s): G, G2, G21, J, J1, J15, R, R5, R51 Research Theme(s): Money and payments, Cash and bank notes

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Journal publications

Refereed journals

  • Correcting Selection Bias in Non-probability Two-phase Payment Survey (with John Tsang), Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 2025.
  • Effects of Shoe-Leather Cost on Consumer Cash Withdrawal Behavior (with Matthew Strathearn and Marcel C. Voia), Review of Network Economics, 2024
  • Multi-dimensional Latent Group Structure with Heterogeneous Distributions (with Wendun Wang and Xuan Leng), Journal of Econometrics, 2021.
  • Quantile Treatment Effects in the Regression Kink Design (with Harold D. Chiang and Yuya Sasaki), Econometric Theory, 2020.
  • A Spatial Panel Model of Bank Branches in Canada (with Matthew Strathearn), Advances in Econometrics (Volume 42): The Econometrics of Networks. Editors: Áureo De Paula (UCL), Elie Tamer (Harvard), and Marcel Voia (Carleton), 2019.
  • Identification and Wavelet Estimation of Weighted ATE in a Class of Switching Regime Models (with Yanqin Fan), Journal of Econometrics, 2019.
  • The Mode is the Message: Using Paradata to Identify Survey Design Effects (with Geoff Dunbar and Rallye Shen), Advances in Econometrics (Volume 41): Essays in Honor of Cheng Hsiao. Editors: M. Hashem Pesaran (USC), Tong Li (Vanderbilt), and Dek Terrell (LSU), 2019.
  • Cash versus Card: Payment Discontinuities and the Burden of Holding Coins (with Kim Huynh and Oz Shy), Journal of Banking and Finance, 2019.
  • Variance Estimation for Survey-Weighted Data Using Bootstrap Resampling Methods: 2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey Questionnaire (with Rallye Shen), Advances in Econometrics (Volume 39): The Econometrics of Complex Survey Data: Theory and Applications. Editors: Gautam Tripathi (U Luxembourg), David Jacho-Chavez (Emory U), Kim P. Huynh (Bank of Canada), 2018.
  • Measuring Consumer Cash Holdings: Lessons from the 2013 Bank of Canada Methods-of-Payment Survey (with Chris Henry, Kim Huynh, Rallye Shen, Kyle Vincent), Survey Practice, 2016.
  • Retail Payment Innovations and Cash Usage: Accounting for Attrition Using Refreshment Samples (with Marie-Helene Felt and Kim Huynh), Journal of Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 2016.
  • Inference for the Correlation Coefficient between Potential Outcomes in the Gaussian Switching Regime Model (with Yanqin Fan and Ruixuan Liu), Journal of Econometrics, 2016.
  • Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: Using the Least Squares Criterion for Quantile Regression, Economics Letters, 2015.
  • A Flexible Parametric Approach for Estimating Switching Regime Models and Treatment Effect Parameters (with Yanqin Fan and Jisong Wu), Journal of Econometrics, 2014.

Working Papers

  • Low Response Rate from Merchants? Sample and Ask Consumers! An Application of Indirect Sampling Under a Consumer-Merchant Bipartite Network (with Joy Wu)
  • Incorporating trip-chaining to measuring cash accessibility from Canadian ABM and bank branch networks (with Hong Yu Xiao)
  • Inference of jumps using wavelet variance (with Mototsugu Shintani).
  • Within-group Estimators for Fixed Effects Quantile Models with Large N and Large T.
  • Local Polynomial Wavelet Estimation of the Local Average Treatment Effect.