This paper studies how the allocation of residual losses affects trading and welfare in a central counterparty. I compare loss sharing under two loss-allocation mechanisms - variation margin haircutting and cash calls - and study the privately and socially optimal degree of loss sharing. For...

We measure systemic risk in the network of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) as the probability that two or more FMIs have a large credit risk exposure to the same FMI participant. We construct indicators of credit risk exposures in three main Canadian FMIs during the period 2007-11 and...

The policy measures taken since the financial crisis have greatly expanded the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and have thus raised the level of aggregate bank reserves as well. Over the same period there has been a significant shift in the timing of payments made over the Federal...

Under which conditions is it advantageous for countries to form a single payments area? This question is analyzed in a model of spatial bank competition to understand better the economic foundations of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). An economic research perspective on the mostly informal...

Dealer networks provide essential intermediation services in over-the-counter markets. We document the response of dealer networks to the arrival of new public information. We find that after public news releases, dealer networks become more complex and channel larger flows of securities between...

In Ireland, there was a bank strike that led to a complete shut-down of the main part of the banking system from May to November 1970. The effects of this strike were surprisingly limited. This had led some observers to conclude that trade credit can easily substitute for bank deposits as a...

The increasing importance of risk management in payment systems has led to the development of an array of sophisticated tools designed to mitigate tail risk in these systems. In this paper, we use extreme value theory methods to quantify the level of tail risk in the Canadian retail payment...

This paper estimates potential exposures, netting benefits and settlement gains by merging retail and wholesale payments into batches and conducting multiple intraday settlements in this hypothetical model of a single "calibrated payments system." The results demonstrate that credit risk...

We study settlement fails for trades in the Government of Canada bond market. We find that settlement fails do not occur independently. Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we examine three drivers of fails. First, we find that fails are more likely following the release of surprise...

The recent financial crisis has led to the development of new regulations to control risk in designated payment systems, and the implementation of new credit risk management standards is one of the key issues. In this paper, we study various credit risk management schemes for the Canadian retail...