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We assess the Canadian nominal neutral rate to be in the range of 2.25% to 3.25%, unchanged from our assessment in 2025. We assess the US nominal neutral rate to be in the range of 2.50% to 3.50%, somewhat higher than the range of 2.25% to 3.25% reported in the 2025 assessment.

Deputy Governor Nicolas Vincent discusses how firms set their prices and how pricing behaviour changed in our recent environment of high inflation.

In the year and a half leading up to mid-2003, both employment and labour force participation increased at an unusually rapid pace compared to domestic economic activity. Gains in employment were unusually large, relative to output growth, compared to gains in total hours worked. This is explained by a faster rate of increase in the participation rate of the 55 and older age group, many of whom opted for part-time employment. This shift in the composition of employment contributed to a reduction in the length of the average workweek in 2002. As a result, labour input progressed at a rate that was markedly slower than for employment and more in line with its historical relationship to output growth. The authors anticipate that the 55 and older age group will continue to participate strongly in the labour force, but that as the economy rebounds and uncertainty diminishes, the cyclical component in the growth of part-time work should diminish and that of full-time employment increase. Employment growth should moderate in relation to output growth and there may be a cyclical rebound in labour productivity as total hours worked increases during the initial recovery in output growth.

Models for macroeconomic forecasts do not usually take into account the risk of a crisis—that is, a sudden large decline in gross domestic product (GDP). However, policy-makers worry about such GDP tail risk because of its large social and economic costs.

The Bank of Canada has a mandate to “promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada,” primarily through the conduct of monetary policy and promotion of a safe, sound and efficient financial system. Understanding the macroeconomic and financial system impacts of climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy is therefore a priority for the Bank.

The formulation of monetary policy at the Bank of Canada relies on the analysis of a broad set of economic information. Greater availability of immediate and detailed information would improve real-time economic decision making. Technological advances have provided an opportunity to exploit “big data” - the vast amount of digital data from business transactions, social media and networked computers. Big data can be a complement to traditional information sources, offering fresh insight for the monitoring of economic activity and inflation.

Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri discusses the historical evolution and future prospects for Canadian exports.

This note finds evidence of a positive and nonlinear relationship between mortgage interest costs (MIC) and rental inflation: the impact of MIC on rents is small when population growth is near its historical norm, but significantly stronger during periods of rapid population growth.

In this paper, we extend the state-space methodology proposed by Blagrave et al. (2015) and decompose Canadian potential output into trend labour productivity and trend labour input. As in Blagrave et al. (2015), we include output growth and inflation expectations from consensus forecasts to help refine our estimates.

Do bond risk premiums influence the effects of debt maturity operations? Using a model with realistic bond risk premiums, we show that maturity operations have sizable effects on expected inflation and output when the central bank passively responds to inflation and the fiscal authority weakly responds to the debt level.