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Since the May Report, the international economic environment has continued to improve. Economic activity abroad grew faster than expected, while inflation in the major economies remained subdued.

Canada’s inflation-control targets establish a specific medium-term objective for monetary policy.

Six months ago, at the time of the last Monetary Policy Report, the global economic and financial environment was volatile and highly uncertain because of the adverse situation in Asia and the fallout from the Russian debt moratorium.

The global economy has shown greater strength than was anticipated at the time of the November Report.

The author proposes a test for the parametric specification of each component in the diffusion matrix of a d-dimensional diffusion process. Overall, d (d-1)/2 test statistics are constructed for the off-diagonal components, while d test statistics are constructed for the main diagonal components.

Using two complementary approaches, we investigate the importance of U.S. macroeconomic news in driving low-frequency fluctuations in the term structure of interest rates in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We find that U.S. macroeconomic news is particularly important to explain changes in the expectation components of the nominal, real and break-even inflation rates of small open economies.

We develop a model with firm heterogeneity in importing and cross-border shopping among consumers. Exchange-rate appreciations lower the cost of imported goods, but also lead to more cross-border shopping; hence, the net impact on aggregate retail prices and sales is ambiguous.

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.

Emerging-market economies have become increasingly important in driving global GDP growth over the past 10 to 15 years. This has made timely and accurate assessment of current and future economic activity in emerging markets important for policy-makers not only in these countries but also in advanced economies.

This is the first in a series of semi-annual reports by the Bank of Canada on Canadian monetary policy.