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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.

We build a dynamic capital structure model to study the link between systematic risk exposure and debt maturity, as well as their joint impact on the term structure of credit spreads. Our model allows for time variation and lumpiness in the maturity structure. Relative to short-term debt, long-term debt is less prone to rollover risks, but its illiquidity raises the costs of financing.

We quantify the reaction of U.S. equity, bond futures, and exchange rate returns to oil price shocks driven by oil inventory news.

Foreign investment is often constrained by two forms of political risk: expropriation and corruption. We examine the role of government corruption in foreign direct investment (FDI) when contracts are not fully transparent and investors face the threat of expropriation.

An objective function is a key component of a strategic portfolio management model used to determine the optimal allocations of assets and, possibly, their associated liabilities over some investment horizon.

This issue features three articles that present research and analysis by Bank of Canada staff. The first updates previous Bank estimates of measurement bias in the Canadian consumer price index; the second uses a new term-structure model to analyze the relationship between the short-term policy rate and long-term interest rates; and the third examines indicators of balance-sheet risks at financial institutions in Canada.

We analyze 40 years’ worth of natural disasters using a local projection framework to assess their impact on provincial labour markets in Canada. We find that disasters decrease hours worked within a week and lower wage growth in the medium run. Our study highlights that disasters affect vulnerable workers through the income channel.

In a search model of production, where agents accumulate heterogeneous amounts of human capital, an individual worker's wage depends on average human capital in the searching population.

We use detailed consumer credit data to investigate the impact of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, the costliest wildfire disaster in Canadian history, on consumers’ financial stress. We focus on the arrears of insured mortgages because of their important implications for financial institutions and insurers’ business risk and relevant management practices.

It is widely understood that the real price of globally traded commodities is determined by the forces of demand and supply. One of the main determinants of the real price of commodities is shifts in the demand for commodities associated with unexpected fluctuations in global real economic activity.