The paper provides an account of the meaning and implications of TARGET2 in the eurozone (EZ) balance of payments crisis. In this context, it discusses Hans-Werner Sinn's thesis about a stealth bail-out of the EZ periphery by the ECB from a heterodox perspective. Financial liberalisation, a...

It has recently been argued that intra-eurosystem claims and liabilities in the form of TARGET2 balances would raise fundamental issues within the European monetary union. This article provides a framework for the economic analysis of TARGET2 balances and discusses the key arguments behind this...

TARGET2 ist seit gut einem Jahr Zielscheibe massiver akademischer Kritik. Wir legen dar, dass TARGET2 keiner Veränderungen bedarf. Die Salden sind keine echten Kredite und sollten nicht als solche betrachtet werden. Die zugrunde liegenden ökonomischen Probleme sind weder hinreichend noch...

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...

Using detailed loan transactions-level data we examine the efficiency of an overnight interbank lending market, and the bargaining power of its participants. Our analysis relies on the equilibrium concept of the core, which imposes a set of no-arbitrage conditions on trades in the market. For...

A major policy challenge posed by derivatives clearinghouses is that their collateral requirements can rise sharply in times of stress, reducing market liquidity and further exacerbating downturns. Smoothing sharp changes in collateral requirements - an approach known as through-the-cycle...

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 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...

Providing bank notes is one of the Bank of Canada’s core functions. The Bank is therefore interested in whether cash is adequately distributed across society, and this also influences the Bank’s thinking on issuing a central bank digital currency. We provide a perspective on these issues by...

In this paper, we study how the impact of a cyber-attack that paralyzes one or multiple banks' ability to send payments would transmit to other banks through the Canadian wholesale payments system. Based on historical payment data, we simulate a wide range of scenarios and evaluate the total...