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This paper compares the distributional effects of conventional monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE) within an estimated open-economy DSGE model of the euro area.

Freedman and Engert focus on the changing pattern of lending and borrowing in Canada in the past thirty to forty years, including the types of financial instruments used and the relative roles of financial institutions and financial markets. They examine how borrowing mechanisms have changed over time and consider the challenges facing the Canadian financial sector, including whether our financial markets are in danger of disappearing because of the size and pre-eminence of U.S. financial markets. Some of the trends examined here include syndicated lending, securitization, and credit derivatives, a form of financial engineering that has become increasingly important in the last few years. They also study bond and equity markets to determine whether Canadian capital markets have been hollowed out or abandoned by Canadian firms and conclude that the data do not provide much support for that view.

The secular decline in real interest rates has created a challenge for monetary policy, now confronting the zero lower bound more often. An increase in the supply of safe assets reduces downward pressure on the natural interest rate. This allows monetary policy to reach price stability and full employment, but not without cost—permanently lower investment.

The authors build a theoretical model that generates demand for collateral by Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) participants under the assumption that they minimize the cost of holding and managing collateral for LVTS purposes. The model predicts that the optimal amount of collateral held by each LVTS participant depends on the opportunity cost of collateral, the transactions costs of acquiring assets used as collateral and transferring them in and out of the LVTS, and the distribution of an LVTS participant's payment flows in the LVTS.

This paper studies how banks simultaneously manage the two sides of their balance sheet and its implications for bank risk taking and real economic activity. First, we analyze how changes in funding affect the supply of bank loans.

How should central banks design monetary policy in stable times and during recessions? We run a horse race between five monetary policy frameworks in an experimental laboratory to assess how well the different approaches can manage the public’s expectations and stabilize the economy.

We examine how demographic factors influence potential output, focusing on how the age distribution of the working-age population and the old-age dependency ratio affect aggregate productivity. Following Feyrer (2007), we emphasize that the contribution to aggregate productivity varies by age group, with middle-aged individuals (aged 40 to 49) being the most productive.

For stationary transformations of variables, there exists a maximum horizon beyond which forecasts can provide no more information about the variable than is present in the unconditional mean. Meteorological forecasts, typically excepting only experimental or exploratory situations, are not reported beyond this horizon; by contrast, little generally accepted information about such maximum horizons is available for economic variables.

Press releases announcing and explaining monetary policy decisions play a critical role in the communication strategy of central banks. Because of their market-moving potential, it is particularly important how they are drafted. Often, central banks start from the previous statement and update the earlier text with only small changes.

Budget rules can be defined as legislated or constitutional constraints on government deficits, taxes, expenditures, or debt. This paper reviews the budget rules recently legislated in six of Canada's provinces and both of its territories, as well as budget rules in other OECD countries.