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This paper investigates how a low or negative overnight interest rate might affect the Canadian repo markets. The main conclusion is that the repo market for general collateral will continue to function effectively.

Despite the efficiency gains that accompany automation, most large futures exchanges have been reluctant to move away from the traditional trading floor, citing early evidence that open outcry exchanges were more liquid than electronic exchanges. More recent studies, however, suggest that electronic trading is superior to open outcry in many respects, including liquidity. In this article, the author compares the two trading systems. Although many exchanges are shifting towards electronic trading, there are still several obstacles to this transition. But as technology rapidly reduces the cost of automation and increases the demand for global 24-hour trading, a worldwide transition to electronic order-matching will likely be the next important milestone for futures exchanges. Less-automated exchanges (including the Canadian futures exchanges) will undoubtedly continue to study and promote automation in order to keep pace with technological innovations.

Governor Tiff Macklem talks about diversity and inclusion are important for the Bank of Canada, for the economics and finance profession, and for the Canadian economy.

External Deputy Governor Nicolas Vincent discusses the most critical areas to focus on to improve Canada's productivity, which would make the economy more resilient and raise everyone's standard of living.

The Annual Report outlines the Bank’s activities and achievements in 2018. It includes the financial statements and a message from Governor Stephen S. Poloz.

This note presents measures of liquidity used by the Bank of Canada to monitor market conditions and discusses recent trends in Government of Canada (GoC) fixed-income market liquidity. Our results indicate that the Bank’s measures have improved since the financial crisis. Furthermore, GoC market liquidity deteriorated following several stressful events: the euro crisis in 2011, the taper tantrum in 2013 and the oil price shock in 2015. In all three cases, the deterioration remained within historical norms and liquidity returned to normal levels afterwards.

Governor Poloz talks about the economic benefits expected from disruptive digital technologies and the implications for monetary policy.

Consumers believe inflation has fallen, but their expectations for inflation in the near term are showing little progress in returning to pre-pandemic levels. Slow progress may be due to persistently high inflation expectations for services such as rent. In addition, consumers increasingly think domestic factors, such as high government spending, are supporting high inflation, and they believe these factors will take longer to resolve than global factors. Consumers have adjusted their behaviour in response to prolonged high inflation—more people are paying attention to inflation and changing their spending habits. However, actions that may support inflation, such as seeking wage increases to offset it, are dissipating. The negative effects of high interest rates are broadening, and indicators of household financial stress are deteriorating. Consumers remain uncertain about the economic outlook, and this uncertainty is weighing on their spending plans. Workers think the labour market has weakened slightly. However, expectations for wage growth remain high, supported by cost-of-living adjustments in some workers’ wage contracts.

The turbulence in financial markets did not come about against a backdrop of economic weakness. Indeed, over the past number of years, the global economy has shown remarkable strength. We were also seeing encouraging signs of growth being spread more evenly.

This is the first in a series of semi-annual reports by the Bank of Canada on Canadian monetary policy.