Ian Christensen

ian-christensen

Senior Director

Ian Christensen is Senior Director in the Bank’s Financial Markets Department. His primary interests include financial system regulation and the assessment of risks to financial stability. Ian has also worked extensively on monetary policy, specifically the financial channels of policy. He obtained his Masters in Economics from the University of Victoria.

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Ian Christensen

Senior Director
Financial Markets

Bank of Canada
234 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0G9

Latest

Housing Market Dynamics and Macroprudential Policy

Staff Working Paper 2016-31 Gabriel Bruneau, Ian Christensen, Césaire Meh
We perform an analysis to determine how well the introduction of a countercyclical loanto- value (LTV) ratio can reduce household indebtedness and housing price fluctuations compared with a monetary policy rule augmented with house price inflation.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Financial stability, Housing, Monetary policy framework, Transmission of monetary policy JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E4, E42, H, H2, H23

11 June 2015 Assessing Vulnerabilities in the Canadian Financial System

Financial System Review - June 2015 Ian Christensen, Gitanjali Kumar, Césaire Meh, Lorie Zorn
The authors present the four common cyclical vulnerabilities that appear in financial systems, providing examples of qualitative and quantitative indicators used to monitor these vulnerabilities across different sectors. They also discuss other inputs to the vulnerability assessment and to the internal process used at the Bank of Canada for identifying, evaluating and communicating vulnerabilities and risks, and highlight some of the key challenges in assessing financial system vulnerabilities and risks.
Content Type(s): Publications, Financial System Review Article Topic(s): Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G0, G01, G1, G10, G2, G20

Predicting Financial Stress Events: A Signal Extraction Approach

Staff Working Paper 2014-37 Ian Christensen, Fuchun Li
The objective of this paper is to propose an early warning system that can predict the likelihood of the occurrence of financial stress events within a given period of time. To achieve this goal, the signal extraction approach proposed by Kaminsky, Lizondo and Reinhart (1998) is used to monitor the evolution of a number of economic indicators that tend to exhibit an unusual behaviour in the periods preceding a financial stress event.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, C4, E, E3, E37, E4, E47, F, F3, F36, F37, G, G0, G01, G1, G17

14 November 2013 Assessing Financial System Vulnerabilities: An Early Warning Approach

Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2013 Gurnain Pasricha, Tom Roberts, Ian Christensen, Brad Howell
This article focuses on a quantitative method to identify financial system vulnerabilities, specifically, an imbalance indicator model (IIM) and its application to Canada. An IIM identifies potential vulnerabilities in a financial system by comparing current economic and financial data with data from periods leading up to past episodes of financial stress. It complements other sources of information - including market intelligence and regular monitoring of the economy - that policy-makers use to assess vulnerabilities.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): E, E6, E66, G, G0, G01

A Semiparametric Early Warning Model of Financial Stress Events

Staff Working Paper 2013-13 Ian Christensen, Fuchun Li
The authors use the Financial Stress Index created by the International Monetary Fund to predict the likelihood of financial stress events for five developed countries: Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, C14, G, G0, G01, G1, G17

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Education

  • M.A., University of Victoria (1998)
  • B.A., McGill University (1996)

Research Interests

  • Macroeconomics
  • Financial stability
  • Business cycle fluctuations

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