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The objective of this article is to improve our understanding of counterfeiting and its policy implications by reviewing research in this area. There has been almost no empirical work on counterfeiting because of the limited availability of counterfeiting data and related statistics. The authors therefore focus on theoretical studies that directly model the behaviour of the relevant economic agents. They first establish some stylized facts about counterfeiting to provide a general understanding of the problem. They then briefly review several models of counterfeiting and summarize their relevant insights, focusing on the implications of the findings for the incentive to counterfeit, social welfare and anti-counterfeiting policies. The authors find that the policy implications of these studies support the Bank’s comprehensive anti-counterfeiting strategy.

This issue features four articles that present research and analysis by Bank staff. The first focuses on reforming the international monetary system; the second on the role of collateral and haircut policy in central bank lending; and the third on the extraction of information from the Business Outlook Survey using principal-component analysis. The fourth reviews studies that model the counterfeiting of bank notes.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has been named Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

Examination of how, when the policy interest rate is at or near zero, different monetary policy frameworks might help to lower the risk and economic cost of such a scenario; review of 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; examination of monetary policy being used to counteract financial imbalances; conference summary: new frontiers in monetary policy design.

The Bank of Canada announced today that it will conduct a Term Repo for Balance Sheet Management Purposes operation.

Further to the 9 May 2010 announcement that the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve have agreed to the re-establishment of the US$30 billion swap facility (reciprocal currency arrangement), the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve today published the text of that swap arrangement.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney today urged the world's leading nations to ensure that their domestic policies are consistent with the G-20 framework for strong, sustainable, and balanced growth and to support the G-20 financial system reforms.