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This article examines the incentives for banks to hold various assets on their balance sheets for use as collateral when the opportunity cost of doing so can be high. Focusing on the five-year period (2002-07) that preceded the financial crisis, it examines the choices made by financial institutions among the assets that are pledged as collateral in Canada's Large Value Transfer System. This serves as a baseline for collateral-management practices during relatively normal times. The results of this study are important for policy-makers, especially the Bank of Canada, which is concerned both about the efficient functioning of fixed-income markets and about the credit risk it ultimately bears in insuring LVTS settlement. The results suggest that relative market liquidity and market-making capacity are important factors in the choice of securities pledged as collateral in the LVTS.

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external account between shortterm securities and foreign direct investment (FDI).

We use data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations to understand how households are coping with high inflation and high interest rates. We build a subjective measure of financial stress and find that the level of stress is at a historical high but remains manageable for most households.

Monetary policy implementation could, in theory, be constrained by deeply negative rates since overnight market participants may have an incentive to invest in cash rather than lend to other participants.

Stephen Murchison reviews the findings of recent Bank of Canada research on the relative merits of inflation targeting and price-level targeting (PLT) for a small open economy, such as Canada's, that is susceptible to large and persistent terms-of-trade shocks.

During the COVID-19 financial market crisis, central banks introduced programs to support liquidity in important core funding markets. As well as acting as a backstop to market prices, these programs produce useful trading data on prevailing market conditions. When summary information from this data is shared publicly, it can help market participants understand current conditions and aid the recovery of market functioning.

There have been positive developments in the global financial system since the June Financial System Review, in part reflecting some encouraging signs about the global economy. At the same time, significant vulnerabilities remain. The Governing Council judges that the overall risk to the stability of Canada’s financial system has decreased from “high” to “elevated” over the past six months.

Financial system vulnerabilities increase the downside risk to future GDP growth. Macroprudential tightening significantly reduces financial stability risks associated with vulnerabilities. Monetary policy faces a trade-off between financial stability and macroeconomic risks.

The prevalence of entrepreneurs, particularly low-productivity non-employers, declines as economies develop. This decline is more pronounced for women. Relative to men, women are more likely to be entrepreneurs in poor economies but less likely in rich economies.

In this paper we document Canada’s trade policy response to late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century globalization. We link newly digitized annual product-specific data on the value of Canadian imports and duties paid from 1870–1913 to establishment-specific production and location information drawn from the manuscripts of the 1871 industrial census.