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This survey took place between April 28 and May 13, 2022. Follow-up interviews took place in June. Consumers’ expectations for inflation have risen, alongside concerns about prices for food, gas and rent. Short-term expectations are at record-high levels. Long-term inflation expectations increased significantly in the second quarter of 2022, returning to the levels they were at before the COVID-19 pandemic. Most people believe the Bank of Canada can achieve its inflation target. However, some think the process of bringing inflation down will be difficult for the Bank of Canada. Expectations for higher inflation and rising interest rates weigh on consumer confidence. People expect that credit conditions will worsen and wage growth will not keep up with inflation. Flexible work arrangements could attract more people into the labour force.

As the title of the conference suggests, we have seen many boom-and-bust cycles in the commodity sector. This raises one obvious and central question: How can we avoid them in the future?

The main objectives of debt management are to raise stable and low-cost funding to meet the government’s financial needs and to maintain a well-functioning market for government securities.

The world needs an international institution to promote a new monetary order—a well-functioning, market-based global financial system. This will be the subject of my remarks today.

We conduct a large-scale survey to shed light on what people believe about public finance. An experiment demonstrates that central bank communication can persistently shift views on monetary financing. It further suggests that views on monetary financing impact support for fiscal discipline.

How are your past, current and future earnings related to those of your parents? We explore this by using 37 years of Canadian tax data on two generations.

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.

The Bank of Canada’s Merchant Acceptance Survey finds that 96% of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada accepted cash in 2023. Acceptance of debit and credit cards has increased to 89%, and acceptance of digital payments has also increased. However, Canada is far from being a cashless society.

We investigate the welfare consequences of consumer credit regulation in a dynamic, heterogeneous-agent model with endogenous lender market power. Lenders post credit offers and borrowers—some informed and others uninformed—apply for credit. We calibrate the model to match characteristics of the unsecured consumer credit market and use the calibrated model to evaluate interest rate ceilings.

Non-default losses of financial market infrastructures (FMIs) have gained attention due to their potential impacts on FMIs and FMI participants, and the lack of a common approach to address them. A key question is, who should absorb these losses?