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Is shale oil production in the United States a factor in the 2014 oil price decline? Which methods of payment are commonly accepted by merchants in Canada? Bank researchers share their insights on these topics. They also provide an update on the neutral rate of interest as well as on changes to the Bank’s operational framework for market operations.

This article examines what market conditions lead to extreme losses in global financial systems. Using a reverse stress testing approach, it introduces two measures of systemic risk by starting from the tail losses and working backward to identify the events most closely associated with them.

In this issue, Bank researchers discuss the muted recovery from the 2007–09 financial crisis and possible causes. There are also discussions about the Bank’s new Canadian survey of household expectations, measuring both durable goods and housing prices in the CPI and how regulatory changes may affect monetary policy operating frameworks. In the final article, improvements to the management of Canada’s foreign exchange reserves are introduced.

A regulator would want to restrict dividends to force banks to rebuild capital during a crisis. But such a policy is not time-consistent. A time-consistent policy would let banks gradually rebuild capital and pay dividends even when their equity remains below pre-crisis levels.

We develop a model to analyze the link between financial leverage, worker pay structure and the risk of job termination. Contrary to the conventional view, we show that even in the absence of any agency problem among workers, variable pay can be optimal despite workers being risk averse and firms risk neutral.

Using a new data set, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of cross-border mergers and acquisitions during emerging-market financial crises, that is, so-called “fire-sale FDI.” Our findings shed fresh light on whether the transactions undertaken during crisis periods differ in fundamental ways from those undertaken during more tranquil periods.

In the past 25 years, China has introduced numerous reforms, gradually moving from a centrally planned economy towards a socialist market economy capable of robust and sustainable economic growth. China's increasing integration into the global economy, which has been fuelled by this recent and rapid economic growth, has already begun to affect the economies of other countries and to present challenges for policy-makers, both in China and abroad. In addition to examining the determinants of China's past and current growth, the authors consider factors that are likely to support continued growth in the future and assess the implications for both the world and the Canadian economies.

We investigate the macroeconomic impacts of mothballed businesses—those that closed temporarily—on sectoral equilibrium prices after a negative demand shock. Our results suggest that pandemic fiscal support for temporary closures may have eased inflationary pressures.

In the Canadian large value payment system an important goal is to understand how liquidity is transferred through the system and hence how efficient the system is in settling payments. Understanding the structure of the underlying network of relationships between participants in the payment system is a crucial step in achieving the goal.

Our study aims to gain insight on financial stability and climate transition risk. We develop a methodological framework that captures the direct effects of a stressful climate transition shock as well as the indirect—or systemic—implications of these direct effects. We apply this framework using data from the Canadian financial system.