Search

Should a central bank take over the provision of e-money, a circulable electronic liability? We discuss how e-money technology changes the tradeoff between public and private provision, and the tradeoff between e-money and a central bank's existing liabilities like bank notes and reserves.

Commentary and technical data relating to the 2011 target renewal.

Prudential liquidity requirements are a relatively recent regulatory tool on the international front, introduced as part of the Basel III accord in the form of a liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and a net stable funding ratio (NSFR). I first discuss the rationale for regulating bank liquidity by highlighting the market failures that it addresses while reviewing key theoretical contributions to the literature on the motivation for prudential liquidity regulation.

Rising volatility and structural shifts—deglobalization, climate risks, and AI—are reshaping inflation and policy trade-offs. Evidence suggests central banks can accommodate supply-driven inflation while balancing inflation and output, as long as expectations stay anchored and policy reflects shock size, persistence, and broader economic conditions.

This special issue of the Review, “Lessons from the Financial Crisis,” examines the recent research on the role of liquidity in the financial system and on the public policy responses that aimed to restore stability to the financial system during the crisis and to foster economic recovery.

How do deglobalization and rising trade costs affect monetary policy? A two-country, multi-sector model of Canada and the United States shows that bilateral trade-cost shocks generate a manageable inflation–output trade-off under the existing framework — but larger or more persistent shocks would make look-through policies costlier and riskier.

Improving the conduct of monetary policy is unlikely to be the main motivation for central banks to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC). While some argue that a CBDC could allow more complex transfer schemes or the ability to break below the zero lower bound, we find these benefits might be small or difficult to realize in practice.

Recent international experience with the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates has rekindled interest in the benefits of inflation targets above 2 per cent. We evaluate whether an increase in the inflation target to 3 or 4 per cent could improve macroeconomic stability in the Canadian economy.

The research findings highlighted in this article suggest that firm-size differences play a significant role in explaining the productivity gap between Canada and the United States. The authors review factors that lead to a positive relationship between productivity and size and then look at Canadian evidence of this relationship at the firm level. They quantify the extent to which the change in Canadian productivity as well as the Canada-U.S. productivity differences can be accounted for by the change in the importance of large firms and identify several factors that play a role in determining average firm size and aggregate productivity.