Staff research, Publications
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October 8, 2010
Business Outlook Survey - Autumn 2010
Responses to the autumn survey suggest that the economic recovery is progressing. Firms remain positive about the outlook over the next 12 months, but they generally expect growth to be modest, owing in part to a weaker outlook for the U.S. economy.
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October 8, 2010
Senior Loan Officer Survey - Third-Quarter 2010
The survey results point to an overall easing in business-lending conditions during the third quarter of 2010. Both the price and non-price aspects of business lending eased during the quarter. Note that the balance of opinion indicates only the direction of the change in lending conditions; it does not provide information on the magnitude of the change.
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Liquidity, Risk, and Return: Specifying an Objective Function for the Management of Foreign Reserves
An objective function is a key component of a strategic portfolio management model used to determine the optimal allocations of assets and, possibly, their associated liabilities over some investment horizon. -
Nowcasting the Global Economy
Forecasts of global economic activity and inflation are important inputs when conducting monetary policy in small open economies such as Canada. As part of the Bank of Canada's broad agenda to augment its short-term forecasting tools, the author constructs simple mixed-frequency forecasting equations for quarterly global output, imports, and inflation using the monthly global Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). -
Evaluating the Effect of the Bank of Canada's Conditional Commitment Policy
The author evaluates the effect of the Bank of Canada's conditional commitment regarding the target overnight rate on longer-term market interest rates by taking into account the relationship between interest rates, inflation, and unemployment rates. -
Liquidity Transformation and Bank Capital Requirements
This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model where asymmetric information about asset quality leads to asset illiquidity. Banking arises endogenously in this environment as banks can pool illiquid assets to average out their idiosyncratic qualities and issue liquid liabilities backed by pooled assets whose total quality is public information. -
August 19, 2010
Monetary Policy and the Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates
The recent financial crisis and global economic slowdown have renewed interest in monetary policy options when the policy interest rate is at or near zero. -
August 19, 2010
Price-Level Targeting and Relative-Price Shocks
Stephen Murchison reviews the findings of recent Bank of Canada research on the relative merits of inflation targeting and price-level targeting (PLT) for a small open economy, such as Canada's, that is susceptible to large and persistent terms-of-trade shocks. -
August 19, 2010
Should Monetary Policy Be Used to Counteract Financial Imbalances?
The authors examine whether monetary policy should and could do more to lean against financial imbalances (such as those associated with asset-price bubbles or unsustainable credit expansion) as they are building up, or whether its role should be limited to cleaning up the economic consequences as the imbalances unwind.