Financial institutions
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Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States
Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects. -
Estimating Policy Functions in Payments Systems Using Reinforcement Learning
We demonstrate the ability of reinforcement learning techniques to estimate the best-response functions of banks participating in high-value payments systems—a real-world strategic game of incomplete information. -
Strategic Uncertainty in Financial Markets: Evidence from a Consensus Pricing Service
We look at the informational content of consensus pricing in opaque over-the-counter markets. We show that the availability of price data informs participants mainly about other participants’ valuations, rather than about the value of a financial security. -
Safe Payments
In a cashless economy, would the private sector invest in the optimal level of safety in a deposit-based payment system? In general, because of externalities, the answer is no. While the private sector could over- or under-invest in safety, the government can use taxes or subsidies to correct private incentives. -
November 23, 2020
Taking the pulse of Canada’s financial system
Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle discusses how the Bank of Canada is carefully monitoring our financial system as the economy recovers from the COVID‑19 pandemic. -
November 23, 2020
Financial stability and the COVID-19 pandemic
Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle provides an assessment of risks to the stability of the Canadian financial system, including risks stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. -
November 17, 2020
Panel remarks
Governor Tiff Macklem speaks by videoconference at the Public Policy Forum’s Sustainable Finance 2 Roundtable -
November 12, 2020
Helping the economy after the COVID‑19 pandemic
The pandemic won’t last forever. Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins talks about what the economy will need once we’re past the COVID-19 crisis. -
November 12, 2020
Exploring life after COVID-19: the far side of the moon
Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses what the economy will need once we’re past the COVID-19 crisis.