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This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints.

Recent sharp declines in commodity prices and the simultaneous depreciation of the Canadian dollar (CAD) relative to the U.S. dollar (USD) have rekindled an interest in the relationship between commodity prices and the CAD-USD exchange rate.

The author examines recent trends in sterilized intervention among emerging-market economies, to determine the size and extent of this policy in relation to earlier periods of heavy reserve accumulation. He then analyzes whether the domestic costs and risks of substantial and prolonged sterilization are beginning to manifest themselves.

We characterize the bias in cross-sectional Hill estimates caused by common underlying factors and propose two simple-to-implement remedies. To test for the presence, direction and size of the bias, we use monthly US stock returns and annual US Census county population data.

Does the transmission of monetary policy change when interest rates are low or negative? We shed light on this question by analyzing the international bank lending channels of monetary policy using regulatory data on banks from four small open economies: Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway.

In 2015, the Bank of Canada surveyed merchants and found that cash was nearly universally accepted (Fung, Huynh and Kosse 2017). Since 2015, retail payments in Canada have become increasingly digitalized, as many Canadians have adopted digital payment innovations like contactless cards and Interac e-Transfer.

There is currently a policy debate on potential refinements to monetary policy regimes in countries with low and stable inflation such as the U.S. and Canada. For example, in Canada, a systematic review of the current inflation targeting framework is underway.

The authors examine the link between consumption and disaggregate wealth in Canada. They use a vector-error-correction model in which permanent and transitory shocks are identified using the restrictions implied by cointegration proposed by King, Plosser, Stock, and Watson (1991) and Gonzalo and Granger (1995).

Can regulators keep pace with banks’ creative regulatory workarounds? Our analysis unpacks the trade-offs between fixed regulations and crisis-triggered rules, showing that the latter are especially prone to circumvention—and can trigger larger, costlier bailouts.

What risks could stablecoins pose to the financial system? We argue that the stabilization mechanisms of stablecoins give rise to the risk of confidence runs, which can propagate to broader cryptoasset markets and the traditional financial sector. We also argue that stablecoins can contribute to financial stability risks by facilitating the buildup of leverage and liquidity mismatch in decentralized finance. Such risks cannot be addressed by ensuring the price stability of stablecoins alone. Finally, we explore the potential implications of stablecoins for the current system of bank-intermediated credit and for monetary policy.