This paper studies the interdependence between fiscal and monetary policies, and their joint role in the determination of the price level. The government is characterized by a long-run fiscal policy rule whereby a given fraction of the outstanding debt, say , is backed by the present discounted...

This paper analyzes the implications of the global financial cycle for conventional and unconventional monetary policies and macroprudential policy in small, open economies such as Canada. The paper starts by summarizing recent work on financial cycles and their growing correlation across...

This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the Bitcoin standard, a monetary system in which all media of exchange are Bitcoin or are backed by it. The paper explores the similarities and differences between the Bitcoin standard and the gold standard and describes the media of exchange...

We investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumers' payments habits in Canada. We rely on high-frequency data on cash withdrawals and debit card transactions from Interac Corp. and Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System. We construct daily measures of payment habits reflecting...

Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses. We analyze the tradeoffs between the safety and convenience of aggregating balances in addresses, electronic wallets and banks. In our model, agents balance the risk of theft of a large account with the cost to safeguarding a...

We use a simple model to study whether private payment systems based on bank deposits can provide the optimal level of safety. In the model, bank deposits backed by projects are subject to default risk that can be mitigated by a depositor's ex ante and ex post monitoring. Safe payment...

Canada is in the midst of developing three new core payment systems: Lynx, Settlement Optimization Engine (SOE) and Real-Time Rail (RTR). Lynx and SOE will replace the current Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) and Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS), whereas RTR will be a new...

24/7 payment settlement may impact the demand for central bank reserves and thus could have an effect on monetary policy implementation. Using the standard workhorse model of monetary policy implementation (Poole, 1968), we show that 24/7 payment settlement induces a precautionary demand for...

Modernizing Canada's wholesale payments system to Lynx from the Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) brings two key changes: (1) the settlement model shifts from a hybrid system that combined components of both real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and deferred net settlement (DNS) to an RTGS system;...

An anonymous credential mechanism is a set of protocols that allows users to obtain credentials from an organization and demonstrate ownership of these credentials without compromising users' privacy. In this work, we construct the first secret-free and quantum-safe credential mechanism. The...