There was an unusually large decline of bank notes in circulation in October 2018. Some have argued that this was due to the legalization of cannabis in Canada in mid-October.
We propose a macroeconomic model in which adverse selection in investment drives the amplification of macroeconomic fluctuations, in line with prominent roles played by the credit crunch and collapse of the asset-backed security market in the financial crisis.
Cash gives users a high level of privacy when making payments, but the use of cash to make payments is declining. People increasingly use debit cards, credit cards or other methods to pay.
The adoption of inflation targeting (IT) by central banks leads to an increase of 10 to 20 percent in measures of financial development, with a lag. We also find evidence that the financial sector benefits of IT adoption were higher for early-adopting central banks.