Browse research

Bond dealers have traditionally kept bonds in an inventory until clients buy them. But now, dealers have another way to access bonds for their clients: the exchange-traded fund. We discuss this new way to manage bond dealing and what it might mean for bond markets.

I study a model of competing data intermediaries (e.g., online platforms and data brokers) that collect personal data from consumers and sell it to downstream firms.

We propose a new strength measure of the global financial cycle by estimating a regime-switching factor model on cross-border equity flows for 61 countries. We then assess how the strength of the global financial cycle affects monetary policy independence, which is defined as the response of central banks' policy interest rates to exogenous changes in inflation.

Repeated interactions between borrowers and lenders create the possibility of dynamic pricing: lenders compete aggressively with low prices to attract new borrowers and then raise their prices once borrowers have made a commitment. We find such pricing patterns in the Canadian mortgage market.

Severe disruptions in the financial markets, as observed during the 2008 global financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic, can impair the stability of the entire financial system and worsen macroeconomic downturns.

We study the causal effect of mortgage rate changes on consumer spending, debt repayment and defaults during an expansionary and a contractionary monetary policy episode in Canada. We find asymmetric responses of consumer durable spending, deleveraging and defaults. These findings help us to understand household sector response to interest rate changes.

A put option is a financial contract that gives the holder the right to sell an asset at a specific price by (or at) a specific date. A put option can therefore provide its holder insurance against a large drop in the stock price. This makes the prices of put options an ideal source of information for a market-based measure of the probability of a firm’s default.

This equilibrium model explains the trend in long-term yields and business-cycle movements in short-term yields and yield spreads. The less-frequent inverted yield curves (and less-frequent recessions) after the 1990s are due to recent secular stagnation and procyclical inflation expectations.

What is the optimal tax schedule in over-the-counter markets, e.g., those for corporate bonds? I find that an optimal tax schedule is often non-monotonic. For example, trading of some high-price assets should be subsidized, and trading of some low-price assets should be taxed.

We present the structure and features of the International Model for Projecting Activity (IMPACT), a global semi-structural model used to conduct projections and policy analysis at the Bank of Canada. Major blocks of the model are developed based on the rational error correction framework of Kozicki and Tinsley (1999), which allows the model to strike a balance between theoretical structure and empirical performance.