Market structure and pricing

• Volatility and Liquidity Costs

  Staff Working Paper 2013-29 Selma Chaker

  Observed high-frequency prices are contaminated with liquidity costs or market microstructure noise. Using such data, we derive a new asset return variance estimator inspired by the market microstructure literature to explicitly model the noise and remove it from observed returns before estimating their variance.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C5, C51, C58, G, G2, G20
• November 15, 2012

  Access, Competition and Risk in Centrally Cleared Markets

  Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2012 Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Héctor Pérez Saiz, Joshua Slive

  Central counterparties can make over-the-counter markets more resilient and reduce systemic risk by mitigating and managing counterparty credit risk. These benefits are maximized when access to central counterparties is available to a wide range of market participants. In an over-the-counter market, there is an important trade-off between risk and competition. A model of an over-the-counter market shows how risk and competition could be influenced by the incentives of market participants as they move to central clearing. In a centrally cleared market, there may be less risk when participation is high. This helps to explain why regulators have put in place requirements for fair, open and risk-based access criteria.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G18, G2, G21, L, L1, L13

• Price Negotiation in Differentiated Products Markets: Evidence from the Canadian Mortgage Market

  Staff Working Paper 2012-30 Jason Allen, Robert Clark, Jean-François Houde

  This paper measures market power in a decentralized market where contracts are determined through a search and negotiation process. The mortgage industry has many institutional features which suggest competitiveness: homogeneous contracts, negotiable rates, and, for a given consumer, common lending costs across lenders.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial services, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2, G21, L, L2, L22

• Natural Monopoly and Distorted Competition: Evidence from Unbundling Fiber-Optic Networks

  Staff Working Paper 2012-26 Naoaki Minamihashi

  Can regulation solve problems arising from a natural monopoly? This paper analyzes whether “unbundling,” referring to regulations that enforce sharing of natural monopolistic infrastructure, prevents entrants from building new infrastructure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Market structure and pricing, Productivity JEL Code(s): K, K2, K23, L, L4, L43, L9, L96

• Does the Buck Stop Here? A Comparison of Withdrawals from Money Market Mutual Funds with Floating and Constant Share Prices

  Staff Working Paper 2012-25 Jonathan Witmer

  Recent reform proposals call for an elimination of the constant net asset value (NAV) or “buck” in money market mutual funds to reduce the occurrence of runs. Outside the United States, there are several countries that have money market mutual funds with and without constant NAVs.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial stability, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): F, F3, F30, G, G0, G01, G1, G18, G2, G20

• The Sensitivity of Producer Prices to Exchange Rates: Insights from Micro Data

  Staff Working Paper 2012-20 Shutao Cao, Wei Dong, Ben Tomlin

  This paper studies the sensitivity of Canadian producer prices to the Canada-U.S. exchange rate. Using a unique product-level price data set, we estimate and analyze the impact of movements in the exchange rate on both domestic and export producer prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): E, E3, E30, F, F3, F31, F4, F41, L, L1, L11
• February 23, 2012

  Medium-Term Fluctuations in Canadian House Prices

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2011-2012 Brian Peterson, Yi Zheng

  This article draws on theory and empirical evidence to examine a number of factors behind movements in Canadian house prices. It begins with an overview of the movements in house prices in Canada, using regional data to highlight factors that influence prices over the long run. It then turns to the central theme, that there are medium-run movements in prices not accounted for by long-run factors. Drawing on recent Bank of Canada research, the article discusses several factors behind these medium-run movements, including interest rates, expected price appreciation and market liquidity. The article concludes by identifying areas for future research that would further our understanding of fluctuations in house prices.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): R, R2, R21, R3, R31

• Portfolio Considerations in Differentiated Product Purchases: An Application to the Japanese Automobile Market

  Staff Working Paper 2011-27 Naoki Wakamori

  Consumers often purchase more than one differentiated product, assembling a portfolio, which might potentially affect substitution patterns of demand and, as a consequence, oligopolistic firms’ pricing strategies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, L, L5, Q, Q5

• Security Transaction Taxes and Market Quality

  Staff Working Paper 2011-26 Anna Pomeranets, Daniel G. Weaver

  We examine nine changes in the New York State Security Transaction Taxes (STT) between 1932 and 1981. We find that imposing or increasing an STT results in wider bidask spreads, lower volume, and increased price impact of trades.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C4, C43, G, G1, G10, G12
• August 18, 2011

  Mortgage Debt and Procyclicality in the Housing Market

  Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2011 Ian Christensen

  This article focuses on the role that loans backed by housing collateral play in amplifying housing booms and, more generally, procyclicality in the housing market. The author uses a model developed to include borrower and lender households, as well as a housing market, to examine the impact that altering the loan-to-value ratio (either permanently or countercyclically) might have on the volatility of house prices and mortgage debt.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Research Topic(s): Economic models, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing