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Model-based forecasts of important economic variables are part of the range of information considered for monetary policy decision making.

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Early French Scale

The pieces featured on our cover form part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Photography by James Zagon.

This overview includes a brief history highlighting the government's use of the primary and secondary markets to develop a framework for distributing its debt securities to financial market intermediaries and end investors. The framework is also intended to meet the government's debt-strategy objectives of raising stable, low-cost funding and maintaining a well-functioning debt market. Pellerin reviews the government's adoption of a new framework in 1998 as well as the 2005 modifications aimed at attracting continued broad and competitive participation in government auctions.

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A Seventeenth-Century Collector's Guide

This volume, as well as the coins, forms part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada, which, in addition to its numismatic holdings, also houses a reference library of more than 8,000 books, pamphlets, periodicals, and catalogues about money and banking.

Photography by James Zagon.

The combination of rising current account surpluses in Asia and a growing current account deficit in the United States has raised concerns that the resulting imbalances pose a threat to the world economy, especially if they are reversed in a disorderly manner. Some experts believe that normal market forces will resolve these imbalances over time; others argue that policy-makers should facilitate the adjustment with policies that curb domestic demand in deficit countries and stimulate it in surplus countries. Little and Lafrance provide a guide to the major issues and controversies involved in the debate.

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Depression Scrip

The examples of Depression scrip illustrated here are part of the National Currency Collection of the Bank of Canada.

In this article, the authors explain the methodology used to construct real exchange rate (RER) indexes. They also compare and assess various Canadian RER indexes from both an empirical and conceptual standpoint. The authors conclude that both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the best RER indexes are those based on unit labour costs. They note, however, that, for practical reasons, policy-makers should also consider RER indexes based on prices when formulating monetary policy.

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Canadian dairy tokens

These tokens are part of the National Currency Collection at the Bank of Canada.

Photography by James Zagon.

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Chinese Coin Charms

The charms on the cover are part of the National Currency Collection of the Bank of Canada.

Photography by Gord Carter.

The research findings highlighted in this article suggest that firm-size differences play a significant role in explaining the productivity gap between Canada and the United States. The authors review factors that lead to a positive relationship between productivity and size and then look at Canadian evidence of this relationship at the firm level. They quantify the extent to which the change in Canadian productivity as well as the Canada-U.S. productivity differences can be accounted for by the change in the importance of large firms and identify several factors that play a role in determining average firm size and aggregate productivity.