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289 Results

September 11, 2009

Agency Conflicts in the Process of Securitization

Recent evidence finds a positive association between the prevalence of loans of inferior quality and the growth in securitized products. Some attribute this development to the lack of incentives for originators to screen and monitor the performance of securitized loans; others stress that certain factors, such as balance-sheet management, also contributed to the problem, making it difficult to pin down the reason for the proliferation of such loans during the period of high securitization growth. The author reviews the conflicts of interest between participants in the securitization process that contributed to the ongoing financial turmoil and highlights the most recent policy measures and potential solutions for ameliorating these agency issues.
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.

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

Labour Shares and the Role of Capital and Labour Market Imperfections

Staff Discussion Paper 2009-2 Lena Suchanek
In continental Europe, labour shares in national income have exhibited considerable variation since 1970. Empirical and theoretical research suggests that the evolution of labour markets and labour market imperfections can, in part, explain this phenomenon.
November 11, 2008

The Role of Dealers in Providing Interday Liquidity in the Canadian-Dollar Market

Access to information about the future direction of the exchange rate can be extremely valuable in the foreign exchange market. Evidence presented in this article suggests that Canadian dealers are more likely to provide interday liquidity to foreign, rather than Canadian, financial customers, since foreign financial flows can be more informative about future movements in the exchange rate. The author reveals a statistical relationship between the supply of liquidity provided by non-financial firms and that provided by dealing institutions across time, and across markets, and suggests that the relationship between the positions of commercial clients and market-makers, and the role played by dealers in interday liquidity provision, has been understated in the market microstructure literature.

The Role of Bank Capital in the Propagation of Shocks

Staff Working Paper 2008-36 Césaire Meh, Kevin Moran
Recent events in financial markets have underlined the importance of analyzing the link between the financial health of banks and real economic activity. This paper contributes to this analysis by constructing a dynamic general equilibrium model in which the balance sheet of banks affects the propagation of shocks.

What To Do about Bilateral Credit Limits in the LVTS When a Closure Is Anticipated: Risk versus Liquidity Sharing among LVTS Participants

Staff Discussion Paper 2008-13 Sean O'Connor, Greg Caldwell
The authors examine the effect of a trade-off between shared credit risk and liquidity efficiency, among participants in Tranche 2 of the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS T2), on their decisions to leave open, or close, their bilateral credit limits (BCLs) to a participant at risk of imminent closure.

Market Structure and the Diffusion of E-Commerce: Evidence from the Retail Banking Industry

Staff Working Paper 2008-32 Jason Allen, Robert Clark, Jean-François Houde
This paper studies the role that market structure plays in affecting the diffusion of electronic banking. Electronic banking (and electronic commerce more generally) reduces the cost of performing many types of transactions for firms.
September 15, 2008

The Bank of Canada's Senior Loan Officer Survey

The Bank of Canada maintains regular contact with financial institutions as part of the information-gathering process that feeds into the larger set of information used to arrive at its monetary policy decision. Since 1999, the Bank has been conducting a quarterly survey of the business-lending practices of major Canadian financial institutions. Analysis of the information collected shows that it is correlated with future growth in both credit and business investment. This article focuses on how the survey is conducted and describes the construction of the summary statistics, highlighting the key statistical relationships in the historical survey data.
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