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The Bank of Canada's new Quarterly Projection Model, QPM, combines the short-term dynamic properties necessary to support regular economic projections with the consistent behavioural structure necessary for policy analysis.

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.

We identify and quantify fiscal news shocks, compiling events (2001–2023) that altered the expected path of U.S. defense expenditure. For each event, we estimate market-implied shifts in expected spending. A shift-share analysis yields a two-year, metropolitan statistical area–level GDP multiplier of approximately 1 for U.S. military build-ups.

The Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE) collects respondents’ views on inflation, the labour market and household finances. The survey for the third quarter of 2020 was conducted from August 17 to September 1, 2020. Reported COVID‑19 cases have risen in some provinces since the survey was conducted. The survey included questions, introduced in the previous quarter, on the impacts of COVID‑19 and the measures to contain its spread, along with new questions on how the pandemic is affecting households’ savings.

Given the increasing interdependence of both financial systems and attendant payment and settlement systems a vital question is what form should optimal policy take when there are two connected payment systems with separate regulators.

We look at the informational content of consensus pricing in opaque over-the-counter markets. We show that the availability of price data informs participants mainly about other participants’ valuations, rather than about the value of a financial security.

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.

Dion examines the evolution of Canadian productivity since the mid-1990s, using the United States as a benchmark. During this period, trend productivity growth in Canada remained modest, whereas the U.S. witnessed a strong resurgence. Among the factors identified as potential root causes of Canada's lower productivity performance are a lower investment in information and communications technology, reallocation and adjustment costs associated with large relative price movements, and a weak demand for innovation.

The Reports section of the Financial System Review examines selected issues of relevance to the Canadian and global financial systems. The June 2014 issue features three reports on financial system initiatives: making financial benchmarks more robust; implementing the stronger Basel III capital and liquidity framework for banks; and using stress tests to assess financial system risks.