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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.

We analyze the impact of interest rate policy on financial stability in an environment where banks can experience runs on their short-term liabilities, forcing them to sell assets at fire-sale prices.

Using the quantum Monte Carlo algorithm, we study whether quantum computing can improve the run time of economic applications and challenges in doing so. We apply the algorithm to two models: a stress testing bank model and a DSGE model solved with deep learning. We also present innovations in the algorithm and benchmark it to classical Monte Carlo.

How does the supply of nominal government debt affect the macroeconomy? To answer this question, we propose a portfolio-balance model of the yield curve in which inflation is determined through an interest rate rule.

Using a two-stage model, we study the determinants of Canadian consumers’ choices of payment method at the point of sale. We estimate consumer preferences and adoption costs for various combinations of payment methods. We analyze how introducing a central bank digital currency would affect the market equilibrium.

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.

Crowdfunding may enable unique products to reach the consumer market. I model a crowdfunding technology that publicly screens consumer demand early in the production process. In this model, entrepreneurs like crowdfunding for risky projects where demand is uncertain, but not for large, safe projects or for projects where production costs are uncertain.

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.

We measure how the change in the share of constrained households in Canada following the COVID-19 recession has impacted the effectiveness of monetary policy.

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.