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...

The authors use simulations within the BoC-GEM-FIN, the Bank of Canada’s version of the Global Economy Model with financial frictions in both the demand and supply sides of the credit market, to investigate the macroeconomic implications of changing bank regulations on the Canadian economy....

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...

An effective pension system enhances economic and financial efficiency. A majority of pension plans in Canada are defined-benefit (DB) plans, but DB plans are under stress from increasing longevity, low long-term interest rates, and the shrinking equity premium. DB plans are vulnerable to such...

Recent work at the Bank of Canada studied the impact of default in Canada's large-value payments system, and concluded that participants could readily manage their potential losses (McVanel 2005). In an extension of that work, the authors use a much larger set of daily payments data - with three...

The authors present a detailed discussion of the Bank of Canada's framework for the implementation of monetary policy. As background, they provide a brief overview of the financial system in Canada, including a discussion of the financial services industry and the money market. Key features of...

The authors examine the effect of a trade-off between shared credit risk and liquidity efficiency, among participants in Tranche 2 of the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS T2), on their decisions to leave open, or close, their bilateral credit limits (BCLs) to a participant at risk of imminent...

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...

The authors examine the degree of contestability in the Canadian banking system using the H-statistic proposed by Panzar and Rosse (1987) and modified by Bikker, Spierdijk, and Finnie (2006). A modification is necessary because the standard approach of controlling for size using total assets...

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...