Nicolas Vincent

External Deputy Governor

Bio

Nicolas Vincent was appointed external Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada for a two-year term, effective March 2023. In this role, Mr. Vincent is a member of the Bank’s Governing Council, which is the Bank’s policy-making body responsible for decisions with respect to monetary policy and financial system stability.

Mr. Vincent is a professor of economics in the Department of Applied Economics at HEC Montréal and co-chair of the Business Cycles and Financial Markets research theme at CIRANO (Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations). Mr. Vincent began his career as an economist at the Department of Finance Canada in 2000. From 2007 to 2012, he was an assistant professor at HEC Montréal, then an associate professor from 2013 to 2021. He was appointed as a full professor in 2021.  He has been a visiting and adjunct faculty member and researcher at numerous institutions, including Columbia Business School, INSEAD, the Banque de France and the Kellogg School of Management.

Mr. Vincent was the 2021 recipient of Marcel Dagenais Award for Outstanding Contribution to Economic Research in Quebec and Canada as well as the recipient of a 2022–26 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant. He was the winner of the Young Researcher of the Year Award at HEC Montréal in 2012 and has won multiple Teacher of the Year awards from HEC Montréal and INSEAD over the course of his career.

Born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Mr. Vincent holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in applied economics from HEC Montréal, a master’s degree in economics from Queen’s University and a PhD in economics from Northwestern University.

Speeches

See More

Staff working papers

Housing Affordability and Parental Income Support

Staff Working Paper 2024-28 Jason Allen, Kyra Carmichael, Robert Clark, Shaoteng Li, Nicolas Vincent
In many countries, the cost of housing has greatly outpaced income growth, leading to a housing affordability crisis. Leveraging Canadian loan-level data and quasi-experimental variation in payment-to-income constraints, we document an increasing reliance of first-time homebuyers on financial help from their parents, through mortgage co-signing. We show that parental support can effectively relax borrowing constraints—potentially to riskier borrowers.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial services, Financial system regulation and policies, Housing JEL Code(s): D, D6, D64, E, E2, E21, E24, G, G1, G18, G5, G51

Debt-Relief Programs and Money Left on the Table: Evidence from Canada's Response to COVID-19

Staff Working Paper 2021-13 Jason Allen, Robert Clark, Shaoteng Li, Nicolas Vincent
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian financial institutions offered debt-relief programs to help borrowers cope with job losses and economic insecurity. We consider the low take-up rates for these programs and suggest that to be effective, such programs must be visible and easy to use.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Credit and credit aggregates, Debt management JEL Code(s): G, G3, G31, H, H5

On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility

Staff Working Paper 2014-45 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Nicolas Vincent
Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns (“sales”) by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, E5, E52, L, L1, L11, L2, L25, L8, L81, M, M3, M31

See More