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Digital payments and decentralized systems enable the creation of new financial products and services for users. One core challenge in digital payments is the need to protect users from fraud and abuse while retaining privacy in individual transactions. We propose a pseudonymous credential scheme for use in payment systems to tackle this problem.

The dramatic growth in China's exports of consumer goods such as clothing, toys, and electronics, and imports of primary commodities such as oil and metals is having major effects on global supply and demand. In examining China's role in global relative price changes, Francis finds that downward pressure on the relative prices of consumer goods is likely to persist as China's large labour supply continues its migration into manufacturing. Likewise, China's size and growth will also remain key drivers of global commodities demand for some time. Despite these forces, inflation-targeting central banks have the tools to keep inflation close to target, thus offsetting any persistent upward or downward inflationary pressure.

This article reviews recent work that uses principal-component analysis to extract information common to indicators from the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey (BOS). The authors use correlation analysis and an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to assess and compare the information content of the principal component with that of responses to key individual survey questions on growth in real gross domestic product and in real business investment. Results suggest that summarizing the common movements among BOS indicators may provide useful information for forecasting near-term growth in business investment. For growth in real gross domestic product, however, the survey’s balance of opinion on future sales growth appears to be more informative.

How much discretion should local financial regulators in a banking union have in accommodating local credit demand? I analyze this question in an economy where local regulators privately observe expected output from high lending. They do not fully internalize default costs from high lending since deposit insurance cannot be priced fairly.

Towards the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Canadian economy experienced a number of structural changes. These included free trade agreements (both the FTA and NAFTA), significant technological advances, deregulation in many sectors of the economy, the arrival of large, U.S.-based retailers, and the introduction of the GST.

First, I should explain what I mean by flexibility. As most of you are surely aware, the Bank of Canada has been openly discussing the importance of promoting policies that support economic efficiency, including financial system efficiency. Efficiency refers to the allocation of scarce economic resources to the most productive uses, in a cost-effective way.

We explain how housing supply elasticities for Canadian cities are estimated. The procedure we use exploits the systematic differences in various cities’ sensitivity to regional house-price cycles.

Household savings in Canada have increased significantly since 2019, especially among homeowners without a mortgage. We assess how savings buffers can mitigate households’ financial risk in relation to asset repricing, mortgage payment renewal and unemployment.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney discusses the “cornerstones of Canada’s prosperity.”

Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses how automation could affect productivity and the Bank’s monetary policy.