Staff research

Cash use is declining while contactless and mobile payments are on the rise.

The use of bank notes in Canada for payments has declined consistently for some time, and similar trends are evident in other countries. This has led some observers to predict a cashless society in the future.

Using an exclusive data set of payment times for retail transactions made in Canada, I show that cash is the most time-efficient method of payment (MOP) when compared with payments by debit and credit cards. I model payment efficiency using Cox proportional hazard models, accounting for consumer choice of MOP.

This paper proposes a method for estimating the joint distribution of two or more variables when only their marginal distributions and the distribution of their aggregates are observed. Nonparametric identification is achieved by modelling dependence using a latent common-factor structure.

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.

This paper proposes a new bootstrap procedure for mean squared errors of robust small-area estimators. We formally prove the asymptotic validity of the proposed bootstrap method and examine its finite sample performance through Monte Carlo simulations.

This paper examines the experience of Sweden with government notes and private bank notes to determine how well the Swedish experience corresponds to that of Canada and the United States. Sweden is important to study because it has had government notes in circulation for more than 350 years, and it had government notes before private bank notes.

A novel dataset from the Bank of Canada is used to estimate the deposit functions for banknotes in Canada for three denominations: $1,000, $100 and $50. The broad flavour of the empirical findings is that denominations are different monies, and the structural estimates identify the underlying sources of the non-neutrality.

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.

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.