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Studies such as Lemmon, Roberts and Zender (2008) demonstrate how stable firms’ capital structures are over time, and raise the question of whether new theories of capital structure are needed to explain these phenomena.

We study competition for consumer attention, in which platforms can sacrifice service quality for attention. A platform can choose the “addictiveness” of its service.

In theory, nominal exchange rate movements can lead to “expenditure switching” when they generate changes in the relative prices of goods across countries. This paper explores whether the expenditure-switching role of exchange rates has changed in the current episode of significant global imbalances.

Beginning with a review of the adoption of inflation targeting in a broad group of countries, Paulin focuses on changes in the design of inflation-targeting frameworks in light of fifteen years of accumulated experience. Included in the discussion are the use of numerical targets and ranges, the policy horizon, supporting institutional policy structures, and communication, including the publication of forecasts. A recurring theme is how much flexibility an inflation-targeting regime allows. The article concludes that the changes made to the frameworks have been relatively modest since their adoption, but in concert with the improved credibility that has resulted from central banks meeting their inflation-control targets, they have allowed an increasingly nuanced response to economic shocks.

Economic activities typically involve coordination among a large number of agents. These agents have to anticipate what other agents think before making their own decisions.

This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between credit shocks, firm defaults and volatility, and to study the impact of credit shocks on business cycle dynamics.

We construct and estimate a structural two-stage model of equilibrium in a market for payments in order to quantify the network externalities and identify the main determinants of consumer and merchant decisions.

The results of our 2017 Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (December 12 to 15, 2017) when compared with those from 2016 show that Bitcoin “awareness” increased from 64 to 85 per cent, while ownership increased from 2.9 to 5.0 per cent. Most Bitcoin purchasers are using the cryptocurrency as an investment and not as a means of payment for goods or services.

This note summarizes the key findings from Bank of Canada staff analytical work examining the reasons for the recent weakness in Canadian non-energy exports. Canada steadily lost market share in US non-energy imports between 2002 and 2017, mostly reflecting continued and broad-based competitiveness losses.