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A database of historical Government of Canada zero-coupon yield curves developed at the Bank of Canada is introduced in this article, which also includes an initial statistical analysis of the behaviour and evolution of the zero-coupon interest (spot) rates over the full period and two distinct subperiods. Specific areas of interest include the evolution of the levels of key interest rates and yield-curve measures over the sample as well as daily changes in the key interest rates and the yield-curve measures; the identification of a relatively small number of factors that drove the evolution of the yield curve; and the total returns that would have been realized by holding bonds of different maturities for a given holding period.

We explore the drivers of the surge in inflation in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work is part of a joint effort by 11 central banks using the model developed by Bernanke and Blanchard (2023) to identify similarities and differences across economies.

Although the concept of monetary policy lag has historical roots deep in the monetary economics literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the idea. In this paper, we build on Svensson's (1997) inflation targeting framework by explicitly taking into account the lagged effect of monetary policy and characterize the optimal monetary policy reaction function both in the absence and in the presence of the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate.

Since 2012, business investment growth has slowed considerably in advanced economies, averaging a little less than 2 per cent versus the 4 per cent growth rates experienced in the period leading up to crisis. Several recent studies have attributed a large part of the weakness in business investment to cyclical factors, including soft aggregate demand, and, to a lesser degree, heightened uncertainty and tighter financial conditions.

Central banks conduct research involving in-depth interviews with external parties—but little is known about how this information affects monetary policy. We address this gap by analyzing open-ended interviews with senior central bank economic and policy staff who work closely with policy decision-makers.

Although a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of the degree of factor utilization in economic analysis, the impact of the durations of utilization in a production function remains largely unknown, particularly in terms of the duration of equipment utilization.

This paper studies the effects of financial development, taking into account both formal and informal financing. Using cross-country firm-level data, we document that informal financing is utilized more by rich countries than poor countries.

The Bank of Canada is keenly interested in productivity - for a number of reasons. Productivity gains are a key determinant of growth in potential output and, hence, of Canada's sustainable pace of non-inflationary economic expansion.

The author proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector into a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with a financial accelerator.

Using a novel dynamic portfolio balance model of the yield curve for Government of Canada bonds, I find that the Bank of Canada’s Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program reduced Canadian 10-year and 5-year zero-coupon yields by 84 and 52 basis points, respectively.