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We propose a framework that allows a portfolio manager to quantify the probability of simultaneous losses in multiple assets of a collateral portfolio. Using this framework, we propose a methodology to conduct stress tests on the market value of the portfolio of collateral when undesirable extreme dependence occurs.

Average hourly real wage series from the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) program and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program have evolved very differently over the past decades.

The Canadian financial system comprises financial markets, financial institutions, and the clearing and settlement systems.

How do households respond when they receive unanticipated income, such as an inheritance or government stimulus cheque? This paper studies these windfall income shocks through a model of household behaviour that generates a realistic consumption response for households along the entire distribution of wealth.

Examination of progress in the Bank’s exploration of two alternatives to the current inflation-targeting framework: (i) lowering the inflation target and (ii) shifting to a price-level target; a review of arguments for and against price-level targeting, focusing on its costs and benefits compared with inflation targeting; assessing the merits of price-level targeting vis-à-vis inflation targeting from a debt-revaluation perspective; quantifying redistribution of wealth in Canada in the face of unexpected inflation.

This paper combines loan-level administrative data with household-level survey data to analyze the impact of recent macroprudential policy changes in Canada using a microsimulation model of mortgage demand of first-time homebuyers.

The issue addressed in this article is the extent to which monetary policy in Canada should respond to asset-price bubbles. The article concludes that maintaining low and stable consumer price inflation is the best contribution that monetary policy can make to promoting economic and financial stability, even when the economy experiences asset-price bubbles. In extreme circumstances—when an asset-price bubble is well identified and likely to have significant costs to the economy when it bursts—monetary policy might better maintain low and stable consumer price inflation by leaning against a particular bubble even though it may mean that inflation deviates temporarily from its target. Such a strategy might reduce the risk that a crash in asset prices could lead to a recession and to inflation markedly below target in the longer run. The circumstances where this strategy is possible will be rare because economists are far from being able to determine consistently and reliably when leaning against a particular bubble is likely to do more harm than good. Housing-price bubbles should be a greater concern for Canadian monetary policy than equity-price bubbles, since rising housing prices are more likely to reflect excessively easy domestic credit conditions than are equity prices, which are largely determined in global markets.

Lectures delivered by Gordon G. Thiessen, Governor of the Bank of Canada 1994 to 2001

The global economic recovery is proceeding but is not yet self-sustaining. Greater emphasis on balance sheet repair by households, banks, and governments in a number of advanced economies is expected to temper the pace of global growth relative to the Bank’s outlook in April.