We employ a comprehensive data set and a variety of methods to provide evidence on the magnitude of large banks’ funding advantage in Canada, and on the extent to which market discipline exists across different securities issued by the Canadian banks. The banking sector in Canada provides a...

The Basel capital framework plays an important role in risk management by linking a bank's minimum capital requirements to the riskiness of its assets. Nevertheless, the risk estimates underlying these calculations may be imperfect, and it appears that a cyclical bias in measures of...

This paper explores the reliability of using prices of credit default swap contracts (CDS) as indicators of default probabilities during the 2007/2008 financial crisis. We use data from the Canadian financial system to show that these publicly available risk measures, while indicative of initial...

I study rollover risk in the wholesale funding market when intermediaries can hold liquidity ex ante and are subject to fire sales ex post. Precautionary liquidity restores multiple equilibria in a global rollover game. An intermediate liquidity level supports both the usual run equilibrium and...

The paper employs a unique identification strategy that links survey data on household consumption expenditure to bank-level data in order to estimate the effects of bank financial distress on consumer credit and consumption expenditures. Specifically, we show that households whose banks were...

The financial systems of some countries fared materially better than others during the global financial crisis of 2007-09. The performance of the Canadian banking system during this period was relatively strong. Using a case study approach together with empirical analysis, we assess some of the...

The authors document leverage, capital and liquidity ratios of banks in Canada. These ratios are important indicators of different types of risk with respect to a bank’s balance-sheet management. Particular attention is given to the observations by different types of banks, including small...

In October 2006, Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS) introduced new ratings for banks that account for the potential of government support. The rating changes are not a reflection of any changes in the respective banks’ credit fundamentals. We use this natural experiment to evaluate the...

Using detailed loan transactions-level data we examine the efficiency of an overnight interbank lending market, and the bargaining power of its participants. Our analysis relies on the equilibrium concept of the core, which imposes a set of no-arbitrage conditions on trades in the market. For...