ElasticSearch Score: 11.5108
April 24, 2008
Growth in the global economy began to slow in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008. This reflected the effects of the slowdown in the U.S. economy and ongoing dislocations in global financial markets.
ElasticSearch Score: 11.400544
Most models in finance assume that agents make trading plans over the infinite future. We consider instead that they are boundedly rational and may only form forecasts over a limited horizon.
ElasticSearch Score: 11.266006
October 18, 2007
There have been a number of significant economic and financial developments since the time of the July Monetary Policy Report Update.
ElasticSearch Score: 11.044871
April 27, 2006
The Canadian economy continues to grow at a solid pace, consistent with the Bank’s outlook in the January Monetary Policy Report Update.
ElasticSearch Score: 11.0137205
The paper examines how the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis is affected by a modern variation of the standard model that allows product differentiation (within the traded and nontraded goods sectors) with the number of firms determined exogenously or endogenously.
ElasticSearch Score: 10.939548
August 14, 1997
Privatization—the transfer of activities from the public to the private sector—gained international prominence in the 1980s because of the need to reduce budget deficits and growing concerns about the efficiency of state-owned enterprises and government bureaucracies. This article examines privatization in Canada and its effect on governments' fiscal positions.
Privatization has generally been less rapid and extensive in Canada than elsewhere, partly because of the comparatively moderate size of our public sector. Nevertheless, federal, provincial, and municipal governments have increasingly reduced their direct involvement in the Canadian economy by selling Crown corporations, contracting with private firms to deliver public services, and transferring the development of public infrastructure projects to the private sector.
The fiscal impact of privatizing Crown corporations varies with such factors as the profitability of the enterprise, the size of the government's initial investment, and past write-downs. In general, when privatizations are part of a broader effort to improve public finances, they can contribute to fiscal consolidation by reducing budgetary requirements and debt levels.
When services and infrastructure projects are privatized, it is expected that more efficient private sector management will reduce government expenditures. For example, a private consortium may be better able to manage the financial risks involved in building an infrastructure facility, such as cost overruns or the withdrawal of contractors, than the public sector. The key to raising efficiency and lowering costs, however, is competition, not privatization per se. Therefore, the cost savings arising from the privatization of services or public works depend crucially on the terms of the contract.
Overall, when structured to improve economic efficiency, privatization is likely to enhance the economy's performance, thereby producing long-term economic and budgetary gains.
ElasticSearch Score: 10.889276
January 30, 2004
At the Bank of Canada, we have worked hard over the past several years to define our goals and our methods for achieving them. We have continued to strengthen our monetary policy framework, and we have established priorities in all areas of our operations to help us meet our strategic objectives. In 2002, the Bank set out a medium-term plan for the period 2003–05. The plan’s clearly defined policy frameworks and priorities were critical in guiding our analysis and our decisions in 2003, a year in which Canadians across the country were affected by a number of severe and unanticipated events.
ElasticSearch Score: 10.713193
November 20, 1996
This Report outlines recent developments in the Canadian economy that affect the rate of inflation and provides an account of the measures taken by the Bank of Canada to control inflation.
ElasticSearch Score: 10.702098
In our analysis of the US productivity slowdown in the 1970s and 2000s, we find that a significant portion of this deceleration can be attributed to a lack of improvement in allocative efficiency across sectors. Our analysis further identifies increased sector-level volatility as a major contributor to this lack of improvement in allocative efficiency.
ElasticSearch Score: 10.6549015
We assess how much the recent rate-hike cycle has and will affect mortgage borrowers' consumption through its impacts on mortgage payments. Our analysis provides insights into the effects of changes in monetary policy on the consumption of mortgage borrowers.