Social learning models of investment provide an interesting explanation for sudden changes in investment behaviour. Caplin and Leahy (1994) develop a model of social learning in which agents learn about the true state of demand from the investment suspension decisions of other agents. The author...

The use of payment cards, either debit or credit, is becoming more and more widespread in developed economies. Nevertheless, the use of cash remains significant. We hypothesize that the lack of card acceptance at the point of sale is a key reason why cash continues to play an important role. We...

This paper uses discrete-choice models to quantify the role of consumer socioeconomic characteristics, payment instrument attributes, and transaction features on the probability of using cash, debit card, or credit card at the point-of-sale. We use the Bank of Canada 2009 Method of Payment...

Many predict that innovations in retail payment may render cash obsolete. We investigate this possibility in the context of recent payment innovations such as contactless-credit and stored-value cards. We apply causal inference methods on the 2009 Bank of Canada Method of Payment survey, a...

We exploit the panel dimension of the Canadian Financial Monitor (CFM) data to estimate the impact of retail payment innovations on cash usage. We estimate a semiparametric panel data modelthat accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and allows for general forms of non-random attrition. We use...

We develop a finite-sample procedure to test for mean-variance efficiency and spanning without imposing any parametric assumptions on the distribution of model disturbances. In so doing, we provide an exact distribution-free method to test uniform linear restrictions in multivariate linear...

Although a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of the degree of factor utilization in economic analysis, the impact of the durations of utilization in a production function remains largely unknown, particularly in terms of the duration of equipment utilization. Using French data...

The authors measure the economies of scale of Canada's six largest banks and their cost-efficiency over time. Using a unique panel data set from 1983 to 2003, they estimate pooled translog cost functions and derive measures of relative efficiency and economies of scale. The disaggregation of the...

In this paper, we use firm-level wage and employment data to address whether there is evidence of downward nominal-wage rigidity, and whether that rigidity is associated with a reduction in employment. We describe an estimation bias that can result when estimating reduced-form wage and...

The authors compare the efficiency of Canada's largest banks with U.S. commercial banks over the past 20 years. Efficiency is measured in three ways. First, the authors study key performance ratios, and find that Canadian banks are as productive as U.S. banks. Second, they investigate whether...