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Recent events, such as the East Asian, Mexican, Scandinavian, and Argentinian crises, have sparked considerable interest in exploring how shocks experienced by one country can spread vis-à-vis real and nominal links to other countries' banking systems. Given the large costs associated with banking-system failures, both economists and policy-makers are interested in predicting the onset of banking crises and assessing the likelihood of contagion during crisis events.

Causes and consequences of declining inflation persistence in Canada; the evolution of capital flows to emerging-market economies (EMEs) and the need for EMEs to implement policies that support capital flows; making bank notes accessible for Canadians living with blindness or low vision, sharing assessments of the suite of accessibility features on the current series of bank notes and plans for the next series.

The Financial System Review concludes that the overall level of risk to Canada’s financial system is largely unchanged from six months ago. While household vulnerabilities have moved higher, the ongoing economic recovery in Canada means that the overall risk remains the same. The Bank highlights three vulnerabilities in the financial system: the elevated level of household indebtedness, imbalances in some regional housing markets and the fragility of liquidity in fixed-income markets.

This paper examines the role of bank credit in modeling and forecasting business cycle fluctuations, and investigates the international transmission of US credit shocks, using a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) framework and associated country-specific error correction models.

This paper studies the capital accumulation and welfare implications of reducing capital income taxation in a general equilibrium economy with uninsurable investment risks.

We measure uncertainty surrounding the central bank’s future policy rates using implied volatility computed from interest rate option prices and realized volatility computed from intraday prices of interest rate futures.

To better understand price-setting behaviour in the Canadian economy, the Bank of Canada's regional offices surveyed a representative sample of 170 firms between July 2002 and March 2003. The authors discuss the reasons behind the survey, the methodology used to develop the questionnaire and conduct the interviews, and summarize the results. The study also assessed several explanations for holding prices steady despite market pressures for a change. The survey findings indicate that prices in Canada are relatively flexible and have become more flexible over the past decade. Price stickiness was generally found to originate in firms' fears of antagonizing customers or disturbing the goodwill or reputation developed with them. A detailed discussion of the results includes a consideration of their implications for monetary policy.

This issue of the Financial System Review reflects the Bank’s judgment that household indebtedness and housing market imbalances–the most important vulnerabilities for the Canadian financial system–have moved higher over the past six months. However, the financial system remains resilient, and macroeconomic conditions continue to improve. Other vulnerabilities discussed in this FSR are fragile fixed-income market liquidity and the capacity of an interconnected financial system to mitigate cyber threats.

The Canadian economy is expected to grow by 1.6 per cent in 2013, 2.3 per cent in 2014 and 2.6 per cent in 2015, and to reach full production capacity around the end of 2015.

Is shale oil production in the United States a factor in the 2014 oil price decline? Which methods of payment are commonly accepted by merchants in Canada? Bank researchers share their insights on these topics. They also provide an update on the neutral rate of interest as well as on changes to the Bank’s operational framework for market operations.