Staff research

This note analyzes the evolution of the narrative in the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). It presents descriptive statistics on the core text, including length, most frequently used words and readability level—the three Ls. Although each Governor of the Bank of Canada focuses on the macroeconomic events of the day and the mandate of inflation targeting, we observe that the language used in the MPR varies somewhat from one Governor’s tenure to the next.

The literature highlights that labour market churn, including job-to-job transitions, is a key element of wage growth. Using microdata from the Labour Force Survey, we compute measures of labour market churn and compare these with pre-crisis averages to assess implications for wage growth.

Since the global financial crisis, advanced-economy wage growth has been generally low relative to past recoveries, especially after accounting for the evolution of labour market conditions over this period. This paper investigates a variety of potential explanations for this weakness, drawing on findings from the literature as well as analysis of recent labour market data in advanced economies.

This paper compares the distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE) within an estimated open-economy DSGE model of the euro area.

Based on empirical evidence, I propose a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with two financial sectors to analyze the role of corporate debt composition (bank versus bond financing) in the transmission of economic shocks.

Price controls, or caps, can lead to shortages, as 1970’s gasoline price controls illustrate. One million trades show that the market for borrowing bonds in Canada has an implicit price cap: traders are willing to pay no more than the overnight interest rate to borrow a bond. This suggests the probability of a shortage increases when interest rates are very low.

This paper studies dynamic general equilibrium models where firms trade capital in frictional markets. Gains from trade arise due to ex ante heterogeneity: some firms are better at investment, so they build capital in the primary market; others acquire it in the secondary market.

We estimate an aggregate elasticity of substitution between capital and labor near or below one, which implies that capital deepening cannot explain the global decline in labor's share. Our methodology derives from transition paths in the neo-classical growth model.

We ask whether a weaker contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to productivity growth could account for the productivity slowdown observed in Canada since the early 2000s. To answer this question, we consider several methods capturing channels through which ICT could affect aggregate productivity growth.

This paper considers an economy where central-bank-issued fiat money competes with privately issued e-money. We study a policy-setting game between the central bank and the e-money issuer and find (1) the optimal monetary policy of the central bank depends on the policy of the private issuer and may deviate from the Friedman rule; (2) multiple equilibria may exist; (3) when the economy approaches a cashless state, the central bank’s optimal policy improves the market power of the e-money issuer and can lead to a discrete decrease in welfare and a discrete increase in inflation; and (4) first best cannot be achieved.