
Kim Huynh
Senior Research Advisor
- Ph.D., Queen's University (2004)
- M.A., University of British Columbia (1999)
- HBA COOP, University of Calgary (1998)
Bio
Kim is a Senior Research Advisor. His research interests include industrial economics and applied econometrics.
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Staff analytical notes
2018 Merchant Acceptance Survey
In 2015, the Bank of Canada surveyed merchants and found that cash was nearly universally accepted (Fung, Huynh and Kosse 2017). Since 2015, retail payments in Canada have become increasingly digitalized, as many Canadians have adopted digital payment innovations like contactless cards and Interac e-Transfer.Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada: An Update
The results of our 2017 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (December 12 to 15, 2017) when compared with those from 2016 show that Bitcoin “awareness” increased from 64 to 85 per cent, while ownership increased from 2.9 to 5.0 per cent. Most Bitcoin purchasers are using the cryptocurrency as an investment and not as a means of payment for goods or services.Merchant Acceptance of Cash and Credit Cards at the Point of Sale
Recent data show that the use of credit cards in Canada has been increasing, while the use of cash has been declining. At the same time, only two-thirds of small or medium-sized businesses accept credit cards.Staff discussion papers
2019 Cash Alternative Survey Results
The role of cash in Canadians’ lives has been evolving, as innovations in digital payments have become more widely adopted over the past decade. We contribute to the Bank of Canada’s research on central bank digital currency by monitoring Canadians’ use of cash and their adoption of digital payment methods.Cash and COVID-19: The impact of the pandemic on demand for and use of cash
Consumer spending declined significantly during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This negative shock likely reduced spending across all methods of payment (cash, debit, credit, etc.). The mix of payment methods consumers use could also be affected. We study how the pandemic has influenced the demand for and use of cash. We also offer insights into the use of other payment methods, such as debit and credit cards.2018 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey: Awareness and Usage
The Bank of Canada continues to use the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) to monitor trends in Canadians’ awareness, ownership and use of Bitcoin. The most recent iteration was conducted in late 2018, following an 85 percent decline in the price of Bitcoin throughout the year.2017 Methods-of-Payment Survey Report
Cash use is declining while contactless and mobile payments are on the rise.2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey Results
As the sole issuer of bank notes, the Bank of Canada conducts methods-of-payment (MOP) surveys to obtain a detailed and representative snapshot of Canadian payment choices, with a focus on cash usage.Staff working papers
Survival Analysis of Bank Note Circulation: Fitness, Network Structure and Machine Learning
Using the Bank of Canada's Currency Information Management Strategy, we analyze the network structure traced by a bank note’s travel in circulation and find that the denomination of the bank note is important in our potential understanding of the demand and use of cash.Demand for Payment Services and Consumer Welfare: The Introduction of a Central Bank Digital Currency
Using a two-stage model, we study the determinants of Canadian consumers’ choices of payment method at the point of sale. We estimate consumer preferences and adoption costs for various combinations of payment methods. We analyze how introducing a central bank digital currency would affect the market equilibrium.Explaining the Interplay Between Merchant Acceptance and Consumer Adoption in Two-Sided Markets for Payment Methods
Recent consumer and merchant surveys show a decrease in the use of cash at the point of sale. Increasingly, consumers and merchants have access to a growing array of payment innovations as substitutes for cash.On the Evolution of the United Kingdom Price Distributions
We propose a functional principal components method that accounts for stratified random sample weighting and time dependence in the observations to understand the evolution of distributions of monthly micro-level consumer prices for the United Kingdom (UK).Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada
There has been tremendous discussion of Bitcoin, digital currencies and FinTech. However, there is limited empirical evidence of Bitcoin’s adoption and usage. We propose a methodology to collect a nationally representative sample using the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) to track the ubiquity and usage of Bitcoin in Canada.Cash Versus Card: Payment Discontinuities and the Burden of Holding Coins
Cash is the preferred method of payment for small value transactions generally less than $25. We provide insight to this finding with a new theoretical model that characterizes and compares consumers’ costs of paying with cash to paying with cards for each transaction.Adoption Costs of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Italian ATM Cards
The discrete choice to adopt a financial innovation affects a household’s exposure to inflation and transactions costs. We model this adoption decision as being subject to an unobserved cost.The Role of Card Acceptance in the Transaction Demand for Money
The use of payment cards, either debit or credit, is becoming more and more widespread in developed economies. Nevertheless, the use of cash remains significant.Retail Payment Innovations and Cash Usage: Accounting for Attrition Using Refreshment Samples
We exploit the panel dimension of the Canadian Financial Monitor (CFM) data to estimate the impact of retail payment innovations on cash usage. We estimate a semiparametric panel data model that accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and allows for general forms of non-random attrition.Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data
We measure consumers’ use of cash by harmonizing payment diary surveys from seven countries. The seven diary surveys were conducted in 2009 (Canada), 2010 (Australia), 2011 (Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands), and 2012 (the United States).Bank publications
Bank of Canada Review articles
Acceptance and Use of Payments at the Point of Sale in Canada
Merchants universally accept cash. Consumers widely hold cash but also carry debit and credit cards. The cost of using a method of payment has only a small influence on which method consumers use. Large merchants accept all payments, while only two-thirds of small and medium-sized businesses accept credit cards. Merchants report that credit cards are the costliest payment method compared with cash and debit cards. However, costs are not the only consideration. Merchant acceptance of credit accounts for the many con-sumers that want to use credit cards. This interaction between consumers and merchants is known as network externalities.The Use of Cash in Canada
The Bank of Canada’s 2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey indicates that the share of cash in the overall number of retail transactions has continued to decrease, mainly because of increased use of contactless credit cards. The share of cash in the total value of retail transactions was virtually unchanged from 2009 to 2013. In particular, the value share of cash transactions above $50 increased. Automated banking machines (ABMs), still the major source of cash for Canadians, were used less often in 2013 than in 2009. Cash use in Canada is broadly similar to that in Australia and the United States.The Changing Landscape for Retail Payments in Canada and the Implications for the Demand for Cash
Over the past 20 years, there has been a major shift away from the use of paper-based retail payment instruments, such as cash and cheques, toward electronic means of payment, such as debit cards and credit cards. Recent Bank of Canada research on consumers’ choice of payment instruments indicates that cash is frequently used for transactions with low values because of its speed, ease of use and wide acceptance, while debit and credit cards are more commonly used for transactions with higher values because of perceived attributes such as safety and record keeping. While innovations in retail payments currently being introduced into the Canadian marketplace could lead to a further reduction in the use of cash over the longer term, the implications for the use of cash of some of the structural and regulatory developments under way are less clear.
The Economy, Plain and Simple
Journal publications
Journal articles
- “On the Evolution of UK Price Distributions”
(with Ba M. Chu, David T. Jacho-Chavez, and Oleksiy Kryvtsov), Annals of Applied Statistics, forthcoming. - “Flexible Estimation of Demand Systems: A Copula Approach”
(with Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, David Jacho-Chavez, and Mateo Velasquez-Giraldo), Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming. - “Using Nonparametric Copulas to Measure Crude Oil Price Co-movements”
(with Anson Ho and David Jacho-Chavez), Energy Economics, forthcoming. - “Debt Financing in Private and Public Firms”
(with Teodora Paligorova and Robert Petrunia), Annals of Finance, forthcoming. - “Merchant Acceptance of Cash and Credit Cards at the Point of Sale”
(with Ben Fung, Kerry Nield, and Angelika Welte), Journal of Payment Systems and Strategy, vol. 12(2), pages 150-165. - “Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada”
(with Christopher S. Henry and Gradon Nicholls), Journal of Digital Banking, vol. 2(4), Spring 2018, pages 311-337. - “Industry Shutdown Rates and Permanent Layoffs: Evidence from Firm-Worker Matched Data”
(with Yuri Ostrovsky, Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia), IZA Journal of Labour Economics, vol. 6(1), Pages 1--31, December 2017. - “Income and Democracy: A Smooth Varying Coefficient Redux“,
(with Alex Lundberg and David Jacho-Chavez), Journal of Applied Econometrics, vol. 32(3), Pages 719--724, April/May 2017. - "Mixed Proportional Hazard Models with Continuous Finite Mixture Unobserved Heterogeneity",
(with Marcel Voia), Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, Volume 33(1), Pages 81--94, January/February 2017. - "Retail Payment Innovations and Cash Usage: Accounting for Attrition Using Refreshment Samples",
(with Heng Chen and Marie-Helene Felt) Journal of Royal Statistical Society Series A, vol. 180(2), Pages 503-530, February. - "Consumer Cash Usage: A Cross-Country Comparison with Payment Diary Survey Data,"
(with John Bagnall, David Bounie, Anneke Kosse, Tobias Schmidt, Scott Schuh and Helmut Stix). International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 1-61, December 2016. - "Measuring Consumer Cash Holdings: Lessons from the 2013 Bank of Canada Methods-of-Payment Survey,"
(with Heng Chen, Christopher S. Henry, Rallye Shen and Kyle Vincent), Survey Practice, Volume 9 (3), 2016. - "Flexible Estimation of Copulas: An Application to the US Housing Crisis,"
(with Anson Ho and David Jacho-Chavez), Journal of Applied Econometrics, Volume 31(1), April/May 2016, pages 603-610. - "The Evolution of Firm-Level Distributions for Ukrainian Manufacturing Firms,"
(with David Jacho-Chavez, Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Oleksandr Shepotylo, and Volodymyr Vakhitov), Journal of Comparative Economics, Volume 44(1), pages 148-162, 2016. - "Post-Entry Struggle for Life and Pre-Exit Shadow of Death from a Financial Perspective,"
(with Robert Petrunia), International Journal of the Economics of Business, Volume 23(1), February 2016, pages 1-18. - "The Distributional Efficacy of Collaborative Learning on Student Outcomes,"
(with David Jacho-Chavez and James K. Self), The American Economist, Volume 60(2), September 2016, pages 98-119. - "Subjective Health Expectations,"
(with Juergun Jung), Journal of Policy Modeling, Volume 37, Issue 4, July–August 2015, Pages 693-–711. - "Consumer Payment Choice: Merchant Card Acceptance versus Pricing Incentives,"
(with Carlos Arango and Leonard Sabetti), Journal of Banking and Finance, Volume 55, June 2015, Pages 130-141. - "A Nonparametric Analysis of Firm Size, Leverage and Labour Productivity Distribution Dynamics,"
(with David Jacho-Chavez, Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia), Empirical Economics, Volume 48, Issue 1, pages 337-360. February 2015. - "Retail Payments Innovation and the Demand for Cash in Canada,"
(with Ben S.C. Fung and Leonard Sabetti), Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, Volume 3, Issue 1, pages 1-29, September 2014. - "crs: A Package For Nonparametric Spline Estimation in R,"
(with Anson T.Y. Ho and David T. Jacho-Chavez) Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 348-352, 2014. - "Adaptive permutation tests for serial independence,"
(with Ba Chu, Chunfeng Huang, and Lanh Tran), Statistica Neerlandica, Vol. 68(3), pages 183-208, 08, 2014. - “Fitness versus Fatness: Productivity, Financial Conditions, and the Survival of New Canadian Manufacturing Firms,”
(with Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia). Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2012 vol. 23(4), pages 354-362. - “Initial Financial Conditions, Unobserved Heterogeneity, and the Duration of New Firms,”
(with Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia), Managerial Decision Economics, Volume 33 (2), pages 109–25, March 2012. - “Functional Principal Component Analysis of Density Families with Categorical and Continuous Data on Canadian Entrant Manufacturing Firms,”
(with David T. Jacho-Chavez, Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia) in Journal of the American Statistical Association, Volume 106 (495), pages 858–878, September 2011. - “npRmpi: A package for Parallel Distributed Kernel Estimation in R,”
(with Ho, Anson and David T. Jacho-Chavez) in Journal of Applied Econometrics, Volume 26 (2), pages 344-349, March 2011. - “Firm Size Distributions Through the Lens of Functional Principal Components Analysis,”
(with David T. Jacho-Chavez) in Journal of Applied Econometrics, Volume 25 (7), pages 1211-1214, November/December 2010. - “The Impact of Initial Financial State on Firm Duration Across Entry Cohorts,”
(with Robert Petrunia and Marcel Voia) in Journal of Industrial Economics, Volume 58 (3), pages 661-689, September 2010. - “The Efficacy of Collaborative Learning Recitation Sessions on Student Outcomes,”
(with David T. Jacho-Chavez and James K. Self) in American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, vol. 100(2), pages 287-291, May 2010. - “Age Effects, Financial Frictions and Firm Growth,”
(with Robert Petrunia) in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol. 34 (5) pp. 1003-1013. May 2010. - “Internally-Corrected Conditional Density Estimation: With An Application to Implied-Volatility,”
(with David T. Jacho–Chavez) in Journal of Quantitative Economics, Vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 20-40. 2009. - “Growth and Governance: A Nonparametric Approach,”
(with David T. Jacho–Chavez) in Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 37 (1), p. 121–143, March 2009. - “Entry penetration in Canadian Manufacturing,”
(with Robert Petrunia) in Economics Letters, Vol. 100 (1), Pages 87-90, July 2008. - “Conditional density estimation: an application to the Ecuadorian manufacturing sector,”
(with David T. Jacho–Chavez) in Economics Bulletin Vol. 3 (62), pp. 1-6, 2007.
Other
Chapters in books
- “Average derivative estimation with missing responses,”
(with Bravo, Francesco and David T. Jacho- Chavez) in Chapter 5, p. 131–156 of Advances in Econometrics: Missing Data, Volume 27A, 2011, edited by David Drukker. Emerald Group Publishing. - “Nonlinear Difference-in-Difference Treatment Effect Estimation: A Distributional Analysis,”
(with David T. Jacho- Chavez and Marcel Voia) in Chapter 9, p. 251–272 of Advances in Econometrics: Missing Data Volume 27A, 2011, edited by David Drukker. Emerald Group Publishing. - “A Nonparametric Quantile Analysis of Growth and Governance,”
(David T. Jacho- Chavez) in Chapter 6, p. 193–221 of Advances in Econometrics: Nonparametric Econometric Methods, Volume 25, 2009, edited by Jeffrey S. Racine and Qi Li. Emerald Group Publishing. - "Estimating State-Price Densities with Nonparametric Regression"
(with Pierre Kervella and Jun Zheng) in Chapter 8, pages of Applied Quantitative Finance, 2002, edited by Wolfgang Haerdle, Torsten Kleinow, and Gerhard Stahl, Springer-Verlag.