Justin-Damien Guénette is the Director of the Overseas Economies Division in the International Department. Previously, he served as a Senior Economist in the Prospects Group of the World Bank where he was one of the lead authors of the flagship Global Economic Prospects report. He has also served in several other roles in the International Department during his time at the Bank, including Director of the International Model Development Division and principal economist in the United States Division. His work experience includes research and policy work on macroeconomic modelling, forecasting, emerging markets and energy commodities. Mr. Guénette holds a M.A. in Global Governance and Economics from the University of Waterloo.
This note presents the annual update of Bank of Canada staff estimates for growth in global potential output. These estimates serve as key inputs to the analysis supporting the April 2024 Monetary Policy Report.
This note presents our estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2020. Overall, we expect global potential output growth to remain broadly stable over the projection horizon, averaging 3.3 per cent, although there is considerable uncertainty surrounding these estimates.
In this note, we provide a brief comparison of the recent developments in the labour markets in Canada and the United States. Our analysis indicates that slack remains in the Canadian labour market, while the US labour market is close to full employment.
Between mid-2014 and early 2016, oil prices fell by roughly 65 per cent. This note documents the channels through which this oil price decline is expected to affect the global economy. One important and immediate channel is through higher expenditures, especially in net oil-importing countries.
Similar to those of other forecasters, the Bank of Canada’s forecasts of global GDP growth have shown persistent negative errors over the past five years. This is in contrast to the pre-crisis period, when errors were consistently positive as global GDP surprised to the upside. All major regions have contributed to the forecast errors observed since 2011, although the United States has been the most persistent source of notable errors.
We examine how demographic factors influence potential output, focusing on how the age distribution of the working-age population and the old-age dependency ratio affect aggregate productivity. Following Feyrer (2007), we emphasize that the contribution to aggregate productivity varies by age group, with middle-aged individuals (aged 40 to 49) being the most productive.
Emerging-market economies have become increasingly important in driving global GDP growth over the past 10 to 15 years. This has made timely and accurate assessment of current and future economic activity in emerging markets important for policy-makers not only in these countries but also in advanced economies.
We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable.
We present the structure and features of the International Model for Projecting Activity (IMPACT), a global semi-structural model used to conduct projections and policy analysis at the Bank of Canada. Major blocks of the model are developed based on the rational error correction framework of Kozicki and Tinsley (1999), which allows the model to strike a balance between theoretical structure and empirical performance.
Various drivers of business investment can be used to explain the underwhelming performance of investment in advanced economies since the global financial crisis, particularly since 2014. The slow growth in aggregate demand cannot by itself explain the full extent of the recent weakness in investment, which appears to be linked primarily to the collapse of global commodity prices and a rise in economic uncertainty. Looking ahead, business investment growth is likely to remain slower than in the pre-crisis period, largely because of structural factors such as population aging.
“Nowcasting the BRIC+M in Real Time” (with Tatjana Dahlhaus and Garima Vasishtha), International Journal of Forecasting, Volume 33, Issue 4, October-December 2017, Pages 915-935.
