Staff analytical notes

Staff analytical notes are short articles that focus on topical issues relevant to the current economic and financial context.

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235 result(s)

How foreign central banks can affect liquidity in the Government of Canada bond market

Staff Analytical Note 2024-26 Patrick Aldridge, Jabir Sandhu, Sofia Tchamova
We find that foreign central banks own a large share of Government of Canada (GoC) bonds and tend to hold their positions for longer than other types of asset managers. This buy-and-hold behaviour could offer benefits. For example, foreign central banks may be less likely than other asset managers to sell bonds and add to strains on market liquidity in periods of turmoil. However, foreign central banks’ buy-and-hold behaviour combined with their minimal lending of GoC bonds in securities-financing markets, as observed in our available data, can potentially lower liquidity because fewer GoC bonds are available for others to transact in secondary markets. Indeed, we find that higher levels of foreign central banks’ GoC bond holdings are related to lower liquidity.

Mortgage stress tests and household financial resilience under monetary policy tightening

Staff Analytical Note 2024-25 Jonathan Hartley, Nuno Paixão
This note analyzes mortgage stress tests, a macroprudential tool. We find that when mortgage stress tests are applied to all mortgage purchase originations, they improve credit quality and reduce credit and house price growth. They also improve the resilience of borrowers to financial shocks, such as the large increase in interest rates during 2022–23.

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.

Beyond the averages: Measuring underlying wage growth using Labour Force Survey microdata

Staff Analytical Note 2024-23 Fares Bounajm, Tessa Devakos, Gabriela Galassi
When it comes to understanding the influence of labour costs on inflation, average wage growth is a misleading indicator because it is affected by composition effects. We propose an alternative measure that corrects for these effects by using microdata from the Labour Force Survey. Our new measure has many desirable properties, including reduced volatility and a better relationship with labour market fundamentals.

Evaluating the portfolio balance effects of the Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program on the Canadian yield curve

Staff Analytical Note 2024-22 Antonio Diez de los Rios
The Bank of Canada’s Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program, launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, lowered the weighted average maturity of the Government of Canada’s debt by approximately 1.4 years. This in turn reduced Canadian 10-year and 5-year zero-coupon yields by 84 and 52 basis points, respectively.

CORRA: Explaining the rise in volumes and resulting upward pressure

Staff Analytical Note 2024-21 Boran Plong, Neil Maru
On May 27, 2024, the settlement period for trading GoC bonds in the secondary market in Canada moved from two days to one. This shortened time for settling secondary cash bond trades caused CORRA volumes to rise significantly, and they have remained elevated since. This combined with the skew in demand for funding has pressured CORRA higher. We find no indications that any other factors are contributing to the most recent pressures on CORRA.

Foreign exchange risk premiums and global currency factors

Staff Analytical Note 2024-20 Ingomar Krohn, Mariel Yacolca Maguiña
Global currency risk factors continue to explain a large share of the variation in the Canadian dollar during the period following the 2008–09 global financial crisis. We show that they are also systematically important for risk premiums, and only in recent months has the role of idiosyncratic country-specific risks grown.

BoC–BoE Sovereign Default Database: What’s new in 2024?

Staff Analytical Note 2024-19 David Beers, Obiageri Ndukwe, Alex Charron
The BoC–BoE database of sovereign debt defaults, published and updated annually by the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, provides comprehensive estimates of stocks of government obligations in default. The 2024 edition updates the historical data and revisits sovereign defaults on local currency debt.

The reliance of Canadians on credit card debt as a predictor of financial stress

Staff Analytical Note 2024-18 Jia Qi Xiao
I analyze the relationship between carrying a credit card balance and future financial stress. I find that carrying a balance significantly increases the likelihood that credit card holders miss future debt payments. This likelihood tends to rise as credit card balances grow and are held for long periods.

Could all-to-all trading improve liquidity in the Government of Canada bond market?

Staff Analytical Note 2024-17 Jabir Sandhu, Rishi Vala
We find that on any given day, nearly half of Government of Canada bond transactions by clients of dealers can be offset with other clients, including during the turmoil in March 2020. Our results show that under certain conditions clients could potentially trade directly with each other and are a step towards understanding the relevance of broader all-to-all trading in the Government of Canada bond market.
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