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Indebtedness and the Household Financial Health: An Examination of the Canadian Debt Service Ratio Distribution
Staff Working Paper 2008-46 Umar Faruqui
The household debt-to-disposable income ratio in Canada increased from 110 per cent in 1999 to 127 per cent in 2007. This increase has raised questions about the ability of households to service their increased debt if faced with a negative economic or socio-economic shock.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Monetary and financial indicators JEL Code(s): D, D1, D11, D14, D3, D39
Price Level Targeting in a Small Open Economy with Financial Frictions: Welfare Analysis
Staff Working Paper 2008-40 Ali Dib, Caterina Mendicino, Yahong Zhang
How important are the benefits of low price-level uncertainty? This paper explores the desirability of price-level path targeting in an estimated DSGE model fit to Canadian data. The policy implications are based on social welfare evaluations.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Inflation and prices, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52
The Impact of Sovereign Wealth Funds on International Financial Stability
Staff Discussion Paper 2008-14 Tamara Gomes
Over the recent period, many emerging-market economies and commodity-exporting nations have experienced unprecedented growth and accumulated substantial amounts of foreign exchange reserves. The management of these foreign reserves has led to the emergence of important financial actors: sovereign wealth funds (SWFs).
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): F, F2, F21, F3, F31, F32, G, G1, G15
Non-Linearities, Model Uncertainty, and Macro Stress Testing
Staff Working Paper 2008-30 Miroslav Misina, David Tessier
A distinguishing feature of macro stress testing exercises is the use of macroeconomic models in scenario design and implementation. It is widely agreed that scenarios should be based on "rare but plausible" events that have either resulted in vulnerabilities in the past or could do so in the future.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Financial stability JEL Code(s): C, C1, C15, G, G2, G21, G3, G33
Good Policies or Good Fortune: What Drives the Compression in Emerging Market Spreads?
Staff Working Paper 2008-25 Philipp Maier, Garima Vasishtha
Since 2002, spreads on emerging market sovereign debt have fallen to historical lows. Given the close links between sovereign spreads, capital flows to emerging markets, and economic growth, understanding the factors driving these spreads is very important. We address this issue in two stages.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Development economics, Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E4, E43, F, F3, F34, G, G1, G12, G15
A Tool for Assessing Financial Vulnerabilities in the Household Sector
Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2008 Shubhasis Dey, Ramdane Djoudad, Yaz Terajima
In this article, the authors build on the framework used in the Bank of Canada's Financial System Review to assess the evolution of household indebtedness and financial vulnerabilities in response to changing economic conditions. To achieve this, they first compare two microdata sets generated by Ipsos Reid's Canadian Financial Monitor and Statistics Canada's Survey of Financial Security. They find that the surveys are broadly comparable, despite methodological differences. This enables them to use the combined information content for the identification of the threshold value of the debt-service ratio (DSR). The article then presents an innovative framework that uses household-level microdata to simulate changes in the distribution of the DSR under various stress scenarios. The authors show how this framework can be used by analyzing the effects of two different scenarios on the distribution of the debt-service ratio and the impact on vulnerable households. This tool will enable researchers to refine their analyses of current risks to the financial health of Canadian households. The article concludes with comments on future directions for refining the Bank's analyses of household sector risk.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Financial stability
The Effects of a Disruption in CDSX Settlement on Activity in the LVTS: A Simulation Study
Staff Discussion Paper 2008-7 Lana Embree, Kirby Millar
The Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) for settling large payments, and CDSX for settling debt and equity trades, are two of the main settlement systems in Canada. They are closely linked; for example, at the end of the day the final CDSX payment obligations must settle on the Bank of Canada's books, with payments made […]
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Financial stability, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, G, G2, G21
Credit, Asset Prices, and Financial Stress in Canada
Staff Working Paper 2008-10 Miroslav Misina, Greg Tkacz
Historical narratives typically associate financial crises with credit expansions and asset price misalignments. The question is whether some combination of measures of credit and asset prices can be used to predict these events.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial stability JEL Code(s): E, E5, G, G1, G10
Sterilized Intervention in Emerging-Market Economies: Trends, Costs, and Risks
Staff Discussion Paper 2008-4 Robert Lavigne
The author examines recent trends in sterilized intervention among emerging-market economies, to determine the size and extent of this policy in relation to earlier periods of heavy reserve accumulation. He then analyzes whether the domestic costs and risks of substantial and prolonged sterilization are beginning to manifest themselves.
Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): Exchange rate regimes, Financial stability, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, F, F3, F31, O, O2, O24
Developing a Framework to Assess Financial Stability: Conference Highlights and Lessons
Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2008 Olivier de Bandt, Céline Gauthier, Pierre St-Amant
Central banks are still defining their approach to financial stability and are at an early stage in the development of useful models. The Bank of Canada's 2007 economic conference was organized to stimulate progress in the development of financial-stability frameworks. Among the highlights reported here are the discussions centred around three proposed frameworks: a contingent-claims-analysis framework, a semi-structural framework, and structural financial-stability models. Participants also reported on their experiences with stress-testing under the International Monetary Fund's Financial Sector Assessment Program and discussed the implications for financial stability of linkages among payment, clearing, and settlement systems.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Payment clearing and settlement systems