Browse research

Previously reported effects of institutional quality and political risks on foreign direct investment (FDI) are mixed and, therefore, difficult to interpret. We present empirical evidence suggesting a relatively clear, statistically robust, and intuitive characterization.

This paper studies the period in Canada when both private bank notes and government-issued notes (Dominion notes) were simultaneously in circulation. Because both of these notes shared many of the characteristics of today's digital currencies, the experience with these notes can be used to draw lessons about how digital currencies might perform.

Inflation can affect both the dispersion of commodity-specific price levels across locations (relative price variability, RPV) and the dispersion of inflation rates (relative inflation variability, RIV). Some menu-cost models and models of consumer search suggest that the RIV-inflation relationship could differ from the RPV-inflation relationship.

This paper estimates a dynamic factor model (DFM) for nowcasting Canadian gross domestic product. The model is estimated with a mix of soft and hard indicators, and it features a high share of international data.

Canadian exports have often disappointed since the Great Recession. The apparent disconnect between exports and the Bank of Canada’s current measure of foreign demand has created an impetus to search for an alternative.

We estimate two new equations for Canadian non-commodity exports (NCX) that incorporate three important changes relative to the current equation used at the Bank of Canada.

Terms-of-trade shocks are known to be key drivers of business cycles in open economies. This paper argues that terms-of-trade shocks were also important for house price fluctuations in a panel of developed countries over the 1994–2015 period.

The common-factor hypothesis is one possible explanation for the housing wealth effect. Under this hypothesis, house price appreciation is related to changes in consumption as long as the available proxies for the common driver of housing and non-housing demand are noisy and housing supply is not perfectly elastic.

The uncertainty around future changes to the Federal Reserve target rate varies over time. In our results, the main driver of uncertainty is a “path” factor signaling information about future policy actions, which is filtered from federal funds futures data.

We document the outcome of an options decimalization pilot on Canada’s derivatives exchange. Decimalization improves measures of liquidity and price efficiency. The impact differs by the moneyness of an option and is greatest for out-of-the-money options.