Posts

• January 15, 2024

  Business Outlook Survey—Fourth Quarter of 2023

  Results from the Business Outlook Survey and the Business Leaders’ Pulse show that with high interest rates and soft demand, firms’ sales growth has slowed over the past 12 months. Firms are less optimistic about current business conditions than they were last quarter, but they expect their sales growth to stabilize in the coming year. With competition returning and demand remaining soft, businesses’ pricing behaviour is slowly returning to normal.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Business Outlook Survey
• January 15, 2024

  Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations—Fourth Quarter of 2023

  Consumers believe inflation has fallen, but their expectations for inflation in the near term are showing little progress in returning to pre-pandemic levels. Slow progress may be due to persistently high inflation expectations for services such as rent. In addition, consumers increasingly think domestic factors, such as high government spending, are supporting high inflation, and they believe these factors will take longer to resolve than global factors. Consumers have adjusted their behaviour in response to prolonged high inflation—more people are paying attention to inflation and changing their spending habits. However, actions that may support inflation, such as seeking wage increases to offset it, are dissipating. The negative effects of high interest rates are broadening, and indicators of household financial stress are deteriorating. Consumers remain uncertain about the economic outlook, and this uncertainty is weighing on their spending plans. Workers think the labour market has weakened slightly. However, expectations for wage growth remain high, supported by cost-of-living adjustments in some workers’ wage contracts.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations
• January 11, 2024

  GMF publishes the final framework on a fee for failing to settle GoC securities transactions

  The Government of Canada Market Functioning Steering Group (GMF) published today the final framework on a fee for failing to settle Government of Canada (GoC) bond and bill transactions.

  Content Type(s): Press, Market notices Source(s): Canadian Fixed-Income Forum

• Extreme Weather and Low-Income Household Finance: Evidence from Payday Loans

  Staff Working Paper 2024-1 Shihan Xie, Victoria Wenxin Xie, Xu Zhang

  This paper explores the impact of extreme weather exposures on the financial outcomes of low-income households. Our findings highlight the heightened financial vulnerability of low-income households to environmental shocks and underscore the need for targeted policies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Climate change, Credit and credit aggregates JEL Code(s): G, G5, Q, Q5, Q54

• Modelling Canadian mortgage debt and payments in a semi-structural model

  Staff Analytical Note 2024-1 Fares Bounajm, Austin McWhirter

  We show how Canadian mortgage debt dynamics can be modelled in a semi-structural macroeconomic model, such as the Bank of Canada’s LENS. The model we propose accounts for Canada’s unique mortgage debt structure.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Economic models, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E27, E4, E43, E47, G, G5, G51
• January 3, 2024

  Bank of Canada conducts Overnight Repo operation

  The Bank of Canada today conducted an Overnight Repo (OR) operation, which is a regular tool that is part of the Bank’s standard operating framework for implementing monetary policy.

  Content Type(s): Press, Market notices Source(s): Overnight repo operations