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Household Debt, Assets, and Income in Canada: A Microdata Study

Staff Discussion Paper 2009-7 Césaire Meh, Yaz Terajima, David Xiao Chen, Thomas J. Carter
The authors use microdata from the 1999 and 2005 Surveys of Financial Security to identify changes in household debt, and discuss their potential implications for monetary policy and financial stability. They document an increase in the debt-income ratio, which rose from 0.75 to 0.95, on average.

The Equity Premium and the Volatility Spread: The Role of Risk-Neutral Skewness

Staff Working Paper 2009-20 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Roméo Tedongap
We introduce the Homoscedastic Gamma [HG] model where the distribution of returns is characterized by its mean, variance and an independent skewness parameter under both measures. The model predicts that the spread between historical and risk-neutral volatilities is a function of the risk premium and of skewness.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13
June 11, 2009

Collateral Management in the LVTS by Canadian Financial Institutions

This article examines the incentives for banks to hold various assets on their balance sheets for use as collateral when the opportunity cost of doing so can be high. Focusing on the five-year period (2002-07) that preceded the financial crisis, it examines the choices made by financial institutions among the assets that are pledged as collateral in Canada's Large Value Transfer System. This serves as a baseline for collateral-management practices during relatively normal times. The results of this study are important for policy-makers, especially the Bank of Canada, which is concerned both about the efficient functioning of fixed-income markets and about the credit risk it ultimately bears in insuring LVTS settlement. The results suggest that relative market liquidity and market-making capacity are important factors in the choice of securities pledged as collateral in the LVTS.
June 11, 2009

The Complexities of Financial Risk Management and Systemic Risks

Risk-management systems in financial institutions have come under increasing scrutiny in light of the current financial crisis, resulting in calls for improvements and an increased role for regulators. Yet such objectives miss the intricacy at the heart of the risk-management process. This article outlines the complexity inherent in any modern risk-management system, which arises because there are shortcuts in the theoretical models that risk managers need to be aware of, as well as the difficulties in sensible calibration of model parameters. The author suggests that prudential regulation of such systems should focus on failures within the financial firm and in the market interactions between firms and reviews possible strategies that can improve the performance of risk management and microprudential regulatory practice.

Simulations du ratio du service de la dette des consommateurs en utilisant des données micro

Staff Working Paper 2009-18 Ramdane Djoudad
The author constructs a formal analytic framework to simulate the impact of various economic shocks on the household debt-service ratio, using data from the Canadian Financial Monitor (CFM) survey.

Adopting Price-Level Targeting under Imperfect Credibility in ToTEM

Using the Bank of Canada's main projection and policy-analysis model, ToTEM, this paper measures the welfare gains of switching from inflation targeting to price-level targeting under imperfect credibility. Following the policy change, private agents assign a probability to the event that the policy-maker will revert to inflation-targeting next period.

Real Effects of Price Stability with Endogenous Nominal Indexation

Staff Working Paper 2009-16 Césaire Meh, Vincenzo Quadrini, Yaz Terajima
We study a model with repeated moral hazard where financial contracts are not fully indexed to inflation because nominal prices are observed with delay as in Jovanovic & Ueda (1997).

Heterogeneous Beliefs and Housing-Market Boom-Bust Cycles in a Small Open Economy

Staff Working Paper 2009-15 Hajime Tomura
This paper introduces heterogeneous beliefs among households in a small open economy model for the Canadian economy. The model suggests that simultaneous boom-bust cycles in house prices, output, investment, consumption and hours worked emerge when credit-constrained mortgage borrowers expect that future house prices will rise and this expectation is neither shared by savers nor realized ex-post.

Testing for Financial Contagion with Applications to the Canadian Banking System

Staff Working Paper 2009-14 Fuchun Li
The author proposes a new test for financial contagion based on a non-parametric measure of the cross-market correlation. The test does not depend on the assumption that the data are drawn from a given probability distribution; therefore, it allows for maximal flexibility in fitting into the data.

Price Movements in the Canadian Residential Mortgage Market

Staff Working Paper 2009-13 Jason Allen, Darcey McVanel
The authors empirically analyze the price-setting behaviour of the major Canadian banks in the residential mortgage market over the period 1991–2007. They use weekly posted prices of the major mortgage providers to study the degree of competition in mortgage price setting.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2
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