We study competition for consumer attention, in which platforms can sacrifice service quality for attention. A platform can choose the “addictiveness” of its service.
We construct and estimate a structural two-stage model of equilibrium in a market for payments in order to quantify the network externalities and identify the main determinants of consumer and merchant decisions.
During downturns, workers get stuck in low-productivity jobs and wages remain stagnant. I build an heterogenous agent incomplete market model with a full job ladder that accounts for these facts. An adverse financial shock calibrated to the US Great Recession replicates the period’s slow recovery and missing disinflation.
We assess the impact of COVID-19 on consumption indicators by estimating the effects of government-mandated containment measures and of the willingness of individuals to voluntarily physically distance to prevent contagion.
Consumption inequality and a low interest rate environment are two important trends in today’s economy. But the implications they may have—and how those implications interact—within different monetary policy frameworks are not well understood. We study the ranking of alternative frameworks that take these trends into account.
Consumers often express concerns about lack of privacy, but they still give up a lot of data to digital platforms. This paper builds a dynamic game-theoretic model of data collection and privacy protection, which potentially explains consumers’ behaviour.
The theory that rich economic diversity of businesses and households both affects and is shaped by economy-wide fluctuations has strong implications for monetary policy. This review places these insights in a Canadian context.
We explore the idea that the financial sector can be a source of non-fundamental risk to the rest of the economy. We also consider whether policy can be used to reduce this risk—either by increasing the supply of publicly backed safe assets or by reducing the demand for safe assets.
Climate transition scenarios clarify climate-related risks to our economy and financial system. This paper summarizes key results of Canada-relevant scenarios developed in a pilot project on climate risk by the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.