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...

The author describes a model with a corrupt banking system, in which bankers knowingly lend at market interest rates to back projects riskier than the market rate indicates. Faced with early withdrawals, bankers turn to an interbank market, which may be available in an unfettered way, available...

Based on a new approach for measuring the comovements between stock market returns, we provide a nonparametric test for asymmetric comovements in the sense that stock market downturns will lead to stronger comovements than market upturns. The test is used to detect whether asymmetric comovements...

This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on the risk-taking behavior of fixed-income mutual funds in Canada. We consider different measures of the stance of monetary policy and investigate active variation in mutual funds’ risk exposure in response to monetary policy. We find...

This paper provides a framework to compare linked and unlinked CCP configurations in terms of total netting achieved by market participants and the total system default exposures that exist between participants and CCPs. A total system perspective, taking both market participant and CCP...

This paper documents a link between the real and financial sides of the economy. We find that retail equity mutual fund flows in Canada are negatively related to current and past changes in a component of the prime and 5-year mortgage rates that is uncorrelated with government rates. The effect...

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...

This paper investigates high-frequency (HF) market and limit orders in the U.S. Treasury market around major macroeconomic news announcements. BrokerTec introduced i-Cross at the end of 2007 and we use this exogenous event as an instrument to analyze the impact of HF activities on liquidity and...

Until recently, there have been few efforts to systematically measure and aggregate the nominal value of the different types of sovereign government debt in default. To help fill this gap, the Bank of Canada’s Credit Rating Assessment Group (CRAG) has developed a comprehensive database of...