How Flexible Can Inflation Targeting Be? Suggestions for the Future of Canada's Targeting Regime

In Canada, inflation targeting is widely agreed to have been a success story, but questions about how the regime might be fine-tuned in 2011 remain open. This Commentary asks how much discretion an inflation-targeting Bank of Canada can be allowed without compromising the credibility of its low inflation goal.monetary policy, Bank of Canada, inflation targeting

Time for Stability in Derivatives Markets – a New Look at Central Counterparty Clearing for Securities Markets

The recent financial crisis has driven many plans for improving the stability and resilience of the global financial system. One concept, managing the risk of default in securities or financial derivatives markets through central counterparties, receives scrutiny in this report. The author examines the role centralized clearing parties could play in improving system resilience. These centralized clearing parties are institutions that interpose themselves between counterparties in financial transactions. The author offers a new look at what these institutions could achieve in over-the-counter derivatives trading and short-term funding markets. He places the emphasis on the core services they could provide: the diversification of counterparty risk and the redistribution of default losses among its members.Financial Services, derivatives, securities markets, central counterparty clearing

Central counterparties

Central counterparties (CCPs) have increasingly become a cornerstone of financial markets infrastructure. We present a model where trades are time-critical, liquidity is limited and there is limited enforcement of trades. We show a CCP novating trades implements efficient trading behaviour. It is optimal for the CCP to face default losses to achieve the efficient level of trade. To cover these losses, the CCP optimally uses margin calls, and, as the default problem becomes more severe, also requires default funds and then imposes position limits

The Emergence and Future of Central Counterparties

We study the role of a central counterparty (CCP) in controlling counterparty risk. When trading is organized via a centralized exchange with fungible contracts -- as in a futures market -- we show that it is optimal to clear trades via a CCP that uses (i) novation to pool the risk of default and (ii) mutualization of losses to insure against the aggregate cost of default in the form of price risk. We then analyze the design of CCP clearing for over-the-counter (OTC) trades where contracts are customized and, hence, not fungible. A CCP can still offer gains from novation by pooling default risk across all customized contracts. Bargaining in OTC trades leads to an inefficient allocation of default risk across trades. A transfer scheme can alleviate this inefficiency, but necessitates novation being offered by a CCP. Hence, the benefit from CCP clearing for OTC markets goes beyond simple netting as it is a prerequisite for an efficient allocation of default risk in such markets.Central Counterparty, Clearing, Over-the-counter Markets, Novation and Mutualization, Default Risk

The emergence and future of central counterparties

The authors explain why central counterparties (CCPs) emerged historically. With standardized contracts, it is optimal to insure counterparty risk by clearing those contracts through a CCP that uses novation and mutualization. As netting is not essential for these services, it does not explain why CCPs exist. In over-the-counter markets, as contracts are customized and not fungible, a CCP cannot fully guarantee contract performance. Still, a CCP can help: As bargaining leads to an inefficient allocation of default risk relative to the gains from customization, a transfer scheme is needed. A CCP can implement it by offering partial insurance for customized contracts.Risk management ; Over-the-counter markets ; Contracts

Trading dynamics with adverse selection and search: Market freeze, intervention and recovery

We study trading dynamics in an asset market where the quality of assets is private information and finding a counterparty takes time. When trading ceases in equilibrium as a response to an adverse shock to asset quality, a government can resurrect trading by buying up lemons which involves a financial loss. The optimal policy is centred around an announcement effect where trading starts already before the intervention for two reasons. First, delaying the intervention allows selling pressure to build up thereby improving the average quality of assets for sale. Second, intervening at a higher price increases the return from buying an asset of unknown quality. It is optimal to intervene immediately at the lowest price when the market is sufficiently important. For less important markets, when the shock to quality and search frictions are small, it is optimal to rely on the announcement effect. Here delaying the intervention and fostering the effect by intervening at the highest price tend to be complements

The Limits of Central Counterparty Clearing: Collusive Moral Hazard and Market Liquidity

Can central counterparty (CCP) clearing control counterparty risk in the presence of risk taking that can aggravate such risk? When counterparty risk is not observable, I show that central clearing leads to higher collateral requirements for two different reasons. Without collusion about risk taking, a CCP offering diversication of risk cannot selectively forgo incentives for transactions that use collateral only for insurance. With collusion about risk taking, a CCP needs to charge collateral in line with the worst counterparty quality to control risk taking. Requiring more collateral reduces market liquidity and worsens incentives causing a feedback effect that amplifies collateral costs

Risk Sharing through Financial Markets with Endogenous Enforcement of Trades

When people share risk in financial markets, intermediaries provide costly enforcement for most trades and, hence, are an integral part of financial markets' organization. We assess the degree of risk sharing that can be achieved through financial markets when enforcement is based on the threat of exclusion from future trading as well as on costly enforcement intermediaries. Starting from constrained efficient allocations and taking into account the public good character of enforcement we study a Lindahl-equilibrium where people invest in asset portfolios and simultaneously choose to relax their borrowing limit by paying fees to an intermediary who finances the costs of enforcement. We show that financial markets always allow for optimal risk sharing as long as markets are complete, default is prevented in equilibrium and intermediaries provide costly enforcement competitively. In equilibrium, costly enforcement translates into both agent-specific borrowing limits and price schedules that include a separate default premium. Enforcement costs - or, equivalently, default premia - increase borrowing costs, while the risk-free rate per se tends to be lower. This suggest a new route for analyzing pricing puzzles by linking agent-specific interest rates to different sources of borrowing costsLimited Commitment, Enforcement Intermediaries, Lindahl-equilibrium, Endogenous Borrowing Constraints

Differentiability of the Efficient Frontier when Commitment to Risk Sharing is Limited

This paper shows that the value function describing efficient risk sharing with limited commitment is not necessarily differentiable everywhere. We link differentiability of the value function to history dependence of efficient allocations and provide sufficient conditions for both properties.