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Demand for Canadian Banknotes from International Travel: Indirect Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

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  • Hongyu Xiao

Abstract

Recent trends suggest that domestic demand alone may not be enough to explain the increase in overall demand for Canadian banknotes (Engert et al., 2019). Estimating foreign cash demand is difficult due to data availability issues and confounding factors that simultaneously affect domestic demand. In this paper, I provide a quantitative causal estimate of banknote demand from international visitors to Canada by exploiting the exogenous shock from COVID-19 international travel restrictions, which led to an unprecedented drop in cross-border travel. To identify international visitor demand shocks from contemporaneous domestic demand shocks due to the pandemic, I apply a difference-in-differences strategy, taking advantage of foreign traveler demand’s distinct regional patterns and data from the Bank of Canada’s Bank Note Distribution System. I find that each international visitor brought on average $165 worth of hundred-dollar notes with them to Canada prior to the pandemic. Under plausible assumptions, total holdings by international visitors constitute roughly 10% of total $100 CAD notes in circulation at the end of 2019.

Suggested Citation

  • Hongyu Xiao, 2024. "Demand for Canadian Banknotes from International Travel: Indirect Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic," Staff Working Papers 24-23, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:24-23
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    2. Walter Engert & Ben Fung & Björn Segendorf, 2019. "A Tale of Two Countries: Cash Demand in Canada and Sweden," Discussion Papers 2019-7, Bank of Canada.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank notes; Central bank research; Coronavirus disease (COVID-19); Financial services; International topics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration

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