Search

How do “cooling measures” in the housing market—policies aimed to stabilize prices—affect the market? We use a structural model of housing demand and price competition among developers to evaluate China’s home purchase restriction policies implemented in 2010–11.

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.

Using U.S. county-level data from 1990 to 2010, we study the causal impact of immigration on the provision of local public goods. We uncover substantial heterogeneity across immigrants with different skills and immigrants of different generations, which leads to unequal fiscal effects across U.S. counties.

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.

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.

Governor Tiff Macklem discusses how structural change—driven by U.S. protectionism, AI, and slowing population growth—is reshaping Canada’s economy. He outlines the Bank’s role in maintaining low and stable inflation while helping the economy through the transition.

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

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

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.