The authors review the state of the debate on hedge funds and the potential threat that hedge funds pose to financial stability. The collapse of a hedge fund or a group of hedge funds might pose a systemic risk directly by damaging systematically important financial institutions, or indirectly...

A default in the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) occurs when a Direct Clearer is unable to settle its final obligation. In August 2012, the Canadian Payments Association amended the ACSS by-law and rules to repeal the unwinding provisions from the ACSS default framework. Without...

This paper studies the efficiency of financial intermediation through securitization in a model with heterogeneous investment projects and asymmetric information about the quality of securitized assets. I show that when retaining part of the risk, the issuer of securitized assets may credibly...

Do short sales restrictions have an impact on security prices? We address this question in the context of a natural experiment surrounding the short sale ban of 2008 using a comprehensive sample of Canadian stocks cross-listed in the U.S. Among financial stocks, which were singled out by the ban...

Since the financial crisis, attention has focused on central counterparties (CCPs) as a solution to systemic risk for a variety of financial markets, ranging from repurchase agreements and options to swaps. However, internationally accepted standards and the academic literature have left...

Do short sales restrictions have an impact on security prices? We address this question in the context of a natural experiment surrounding the short sale ban of 2008 using a comprehensive sample of Canadian stocks cross-listed in the U.S. Among financial stocks, which were singled out by the ban...

This paper studies a dynamic version of the Holmstrom-Tirole model of intermediated finance. I show that competitive equilibria are not constrained efficient when the economy experiences a financial crisis. A pecuniary externality entails that banks’ desire to accumulate capital over time...

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. Using...

The author constructs a measure of foreign activity that takes into account the composition of foreign demand for Canadian exports. It has a number of interesting features. First, the foreign activity measure captures both the composition of demand in the United States (by including components...

The authors empirically analyze the price-setting behaviour of the major Canadian banks in the residential mortgage market over the period 19912007. They use weekly posted prices of the major mortgage providers to study the degree of competition in mortgage price setting. Their results suggest...