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We find the top 10% of the income distribution accounts for three-quarters of the gap in GDP per adult between Canada and the United States. The large gaps in income for high-income earners help distinguish between alternative explanations of this persistent gap in GDP per adult.

Since the global financial crisis, core inflation has been persistently below target in most advanced economies. Recently, it has weakened further in several advanced economies despite gradually diminishing slack. This note reviews recent developments in core inflation across advanced economies and identifies distinctive patterns across regions.

We study economies where firms acquire capital in primary markets then retrade it in secondary markets after information on idiosyncratic productivity arrives. Our secondary markets incorporate bilateral trade with search, bargaining and liquidity frictions.

We investigate the unintended consequences of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). Originally designed to help borrowers refinance after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, HARP inadvertently strengthened the market power of incumbent lenders by creating a cost advantage for them. Despite a 2013 policy rectifying this cost advantage, we still find significant welfare losses for borrowers.

We explore the consumer value proposition of a hypothetical Digital Canadian Dollar, adoption considerations and the users who would benefit most from this potential new payment method. We employ a design-thinking consultation methodology, allowing participants to interact with research prototypes of increasing complexity to reveal user preferences, constraints and adoption influences.

The scale of safe assets suggests a structural demand for a safe wealth share beyond transaction and liquidity roles. We study how investors achieve a reference wealth level by combining self-insurance and contingent liquidation of investment. Intermediaries improve upon autarky, insuring investors with poor self-insurance and limiting liquidation.

Central banks communicate the results of open market operations. This helps participants in financial markets more accurately estimate the prevailing demand and supply conditions in the market for overnight loans.

Banks’ business interactions create a network of relationships that are hidden in the correlations of bank stock returns. But for policy interventions, we need causality to understand how the network changes. Thus, this paper looks for the causal network anticipated by investors.

The literature highlights that labour market churn, including job-to-job transitions, is a key element of wage growth. Using microdata from the Labour Force Survey, we compute measures of labour market churn and compare these with pre-crisis averages to assess implications for wage growth.

In the last half-year, the economic expansion in Canada has become well established, supported by low inflation, highly stimulative monetary conditions, and a strong U.S. economy.