G - Financial Economics
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How to Manage Macroeconomic and Financial Stability Risks: A New Framework
Monetary policy decisions need to consider all potential outcomes, not just the most likely path for the economy. This is especially true in the presence of elevated financial system vulnerabilities, which lead to increased downside risks for future growth. -
Order Flow Segmentation, Liquidity and Price Discovery: The Role of Latency Delays
Latency delays—known as “speed bumps”—are an intentional slowing of order flow by exchanges. Supporters contend that delays protect market makers from high-frequency arbitrage, while opponents warn that delays promote “quote fading” by market makers. We construct a model of informed trading in a fragmented market, where one market operates a conventional order book and the other imposes a latency delay on market orders. -
Did Canadian Corporate Bond Funds Increase their Exposures to Risks?
Canadian corporate bond mutual funds have rapidly increased in number and size in recent years. Their holdings have also become riskier, increasing their exposures to credit risk, interest rate risk and liquidity risk. We also briefly discuss financial stability implications. -
Asymmetric Risks to the Economic Outlook Arising from Financial System Vulnerabilities
When financial system vulnerabilities are elevated, they can give rise to asymmetric risks to the economic outlook. To illustrate this, I consider the economic outlook presented in the Bank of Canada’s October 2017 Monetary Policy Report in the context of two key financial system vulnerabilities: high levels of household indebtedness and housing market imbalances. -
Blockchain Revolution Without the Blockchain
The technology behind blockchain has attracted a lot of attention. However, this technology is for the most part not well understood. There is no consensus on what benefits it may bring or on how it may fail. -
Is the Excess Bond Premium a Leading Indicator of Canadian Economic Activity?
This note investigates whether Canadian corporate spreads and the excess bond premium (EBP) lead Canadian economic activity. Indeed, we find that corporate spreads precede changes in real gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada over the subsequent year. The EBP accounts for most of this property. Further, an unanticipated increase in the Canadian EBP forecasts a deterioration of domestic macroeconomic conditions: a 10-basis-point increase results in a fall in both GDP and consumer price index (CPI) of 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per cent, respectively, over three years. -
The “Too Big to Fail” Subsidy in Canada: Some Estimates
Implicit government guarantees of banking-sector liabilities reduce market discipline by private sector stakeholders and temper the risk sensitivity of funding costs. This potentially increases the likelihood of bailouts from taxpayers, especially in the absence of effective resolution frameworks. -
High-Frequency Trading and Institutional Trading Costs
Using bond futures data, we test whether high-frequency trading (HFT) is engaging in back running, a trading strategy that can create costs for financial institutions. We reject the hypothesis of back running and find instead that HFT mildly improves trading costs for institutions. -
Adverse Selection with Heterogeneously Informed Agents
A model of over-the-counter markets is proposed. Some asset buyers are informed in that they can identify high quality assets. Heterogeneous sellers with private information choose what type of buyers they want to trade with. -
The Government of Canada Debt Securities Data Set
We present the daily time series of the outstanding amounts of all Government of Canada marketable debt securities from July 2001 to June 2017.