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Over the past 5 years, real energy and non-energy commodity prices have trended sharply higher. These relative price movements have had important implications for inflation and economic activity in both Canada and the rest of the world. China has accounted for the bulk of incremental demand for oil and many base metals over this period.

Markets for securitized assets were characterized by high liquidity prior to the recent financial crisis and by a sudden market dry-up at the onset of the crisis. A general equilibrium model with heterogeneous investment opportunities and information frictions predicts that, in boom periods or mild recessions, the degree of adverse selection in resale markets for securitized assets is limited because of the reputation-based guarantees by asset originators.

We provide empirical evidence of effects to the aggregate economy from surprises about financial intermediaries’ net worth based on a high-frequency identification strategy. We estimate that news of a 1% decline in intermediaries’ net worth leads to a 0.2%–0.4% decrease in the market value of nonfinancial firms.

This paper shows (i) that business sentiment, as captured by survey data, matters for monetary policy decisions in Canada, and (ii) how business perspectives are affected by monetary policy shocks. Measures of business sentiment (soft data) are shown to have systematic explanatory power for monetary policy decisions over and above typical Taylor rule variables.

The neutral rate serves as a benchmark for measuring monetary stimulus and provides a medium- to long-run anchor for the real policy rate. Global neutral rate estimates have been falling over the past few decades. Factors such as population aging, high corporate savings, and low trend productivity growth are likely to continue supporting a low global neutral rate. These global factors as well as domestic factors are exerting downward pres-sure on the Canadian real neutral rate, which is estimated to be between 0.5 to 1.5 per cent. This low neutral rate has important implications for monetary policy and financial stability.

We study the transmission and third-country effects of international sanctions. A sanctioned country’s losses are mitigated, and the sanctioning country’s losses amplified, if a third country does not join the sanctions, but the third country benefits from not joining.

We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable.

We investigate whether questions in the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey can provide useful signals for the output gap.

Despite various payment innovations, today, cash is still heavily used to pay for low-value purchases. This paper develops a simulation model to test whether standard implications of the theory on cash management and payment choices can explain the use of payment instruments by transaction size.