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Online shopping is often guided by search platforms. Consumers type keywords into query boxes, and search platforms deliver a list of products. Consumers' attention is limited, and exhaustive searches are often impractical.

In this note, we highlight a range of technical options and considerations in designing a contingent system for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Canada and explore how these options achieve stated public policy goals.

In an increasingly digitalized world, issuers of private digital currency can weaken central banks’ ability to stabilize the economy. By continuing to make central bank money attractive as a payment instrument in a digital world, a central bank digital currency (CDBC) could help to maintain a country’s monetary sovereignty.

Improving the conduct of monetary policy is unlikely to be the main motivation for central banks to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC). While some argue that a CBDC could allow more complex transfer schemes or the ability to break below the zero lower bound, we find these benefits might be small or difficult to realize in practice.

We measure the prevalence of zombie firms in Canada and assess how they could potentially affect the financial system.

This note studies how decreases in mortgage rates affect the behaviour of borrowers in terms of spending on durable goods and repaying debt.

We analyze money financing of fiscal transfers (helicopter money) in two simple New Keynesian models: a “textbook” model in which all money is non-interest-bearing (e.g., all money is currency), and a more realistic model with interest-bearing reserves.

Using data on bank branch locations across Canada from 2008 to 2018, we explore an interesting aspect of bank branch competition—geographic concentration. We find that bank branch density does not correlate with geographic and market concentration; however, we do find strong correlation with postal-code demographics.

Real growth in gross domestic product tends to be meaningfully higher when a large share of industries and demand components are growing—that is, when growth is broad across many fronts.

Models for macroeconomic forecasts do not usually take into account the risk of a crisis—that is, a sudden large decline in gross domestic product (GDP). However, policy-makers worry about such GDP tail risk because of its large social and economic costs.