Search

We expect potential output growth to be higher than in the October 2020 reassessment. By 2024, growth will be slightly above its average growth from 2010 to 2019. We assess that the Canadian nominal neutral rate continues to lie in the range of 1.75 to 2.75 percent.

Cover page

Leonard C. Wyon: Canada’s Victorian Engraver

Photography by Gord Carter

Inflation rates in advanced economies experienced two consecutive puzzles during the period following the global financial crisis—unexpectedly high inflation from the end of 2009 to 2011 and unexpectedly low inflation from 2012 to the middle of 2014. We investigate these developments in two ways. First, we show that accounting for inflation expectations by households explains a significant share of the inflation puzzles at the international level. Second, we find that, for Canada, elevated competition in the retail sector is also important for understanding inflation dynamics in the post-crisis period.

This paper predicts phases of the financial cycle by using a continuous financial stress measure in a Markov switching framework. The debt service ratio and property market variables signal a transition to a high financial stress regime, while economic sentiment indicators provide signals for a transition to a tranquil state.

Central counterparties can make over-the-counter markets more resilient and reduce systemic risk by mitigating and managing counterparty credit risk. These benefits are maximized when access to central counterparties is available to a wide range of market participants. In an over-the-counter market, there is an important trade-off between risk and competition. A model of an over-the-counter market shows how risk and competition could be influenced by the incentives of market participants as they move to central clearing. In a centrally cleared market, there may be less risk when participation is high. This helps to explain why regulators have put in place requirements for fair, open and risk-based access criteria.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Bank of Canada transitioned its framework for monetary policy implementation from a corridor system to a floor system, which it has since decided to maintain. We provide a comprehensive analysis of both frameworks and assess their relative merits based on five key criteria that define a sound framework.

This article discusses three scenarios for the adjustment of the global economy. In a “baseline” scenario—which encompasses fiscal consolidation in major advanced economies, growth-friendly structural reforms in Europe and Japan, and greater exchange rate flexibility and reforms in the emerging-market economies of Asia to induce rotation of demand away from net exports—global current account imbalances […]

Central banks must cope with considerable uncertainty about what will happen in the economy when formulating monetary policy. This article describes the different types of uncertainty that arise and looks at examples of uncertainty that the Bank has recently encountered. It then reviews the strategies employed by the Bank to deal with this problem. The other articles in this special issue focus on three of these major strategies.

Since 2014, the Bank of Canada (BoC) has maintained a comprehensive database of sovereign defaults to systematically measure and aggregate the nominal value of the different types of sovereign government debt in default. The database is posted on the BoC’s website and is updated annually in partnership with the Bank of England (BoE).