An assessment of the Bank of Canada's term PRA facility

This paper empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Bank of Canada's term Purchase and Resale Agreement (PRA) facility in reducing funding pressures, as measured by the CDOR-OIS spread. It examines the behaviour of this spread around both term PRA announcement dates and term PRA operation dates, using an event-study methodology to control for developments in other money markets as well as proxies for Canadian banking sector credit risk. Overall, there is robust evidence that the term PRA announcements reduced bank funding costs at both 1-month and 3-month terms, whereas we find no evidence of an impact from term PRA operations.

► This paper empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Bank of Canada's term PRA facility in reducing funding pressures.
► Using an event study methodology, there is robust evidence that the term PRA announcements reduced funding costs.
► There is no evidence that term PRA operations had an impact on the CDOR-OIS spread.