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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.

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 number of job gains and losses across firms in Canada each year is roughly one-fifth the total number of jobs and generally occurs within sectors (industries) rather than across sectors. Since labour reallocation within sectors has been strongly related to productivity growth in Canada, defining the key drivers of this type of reallocation is important, given the higher rates of reallocation and productivity growth in the Untied States than in Canada. This article finds that the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and rising commodity prices led to above-average reallocation of labour across sectors over the 2005-08 period, but that the impact on productivity has been minor. Labour reallocation across firms, however, generates substantial labour productivity gains in manufacturing and the business sector as a whole.

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.

This paper assesses the usefulness of consumer confidence indexes in forecasting aggregate consumer spending in the United States.

Cover page

Brass Cash Register, 1910

The register is part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Photographed by Gord Carter, Ottawa.

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.

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.