Search

This paper examines the relationship between volatility shocks and preference shocks in an analytically tractable endogenous growth model with recursive preferences and stochastic volatility. I show that there exists an explicit mapping between volatility shocks and preference shocks, and a rise in volatility generates the same impulse responses of macroeconomic aggregates as a negative preference shock.

Can securities be settled on a blockchain and, if so, what are the gains relative to existing settlement systems? We consider a blockchain that ensures delivery versus payment by linking transfers of assets with payments and operates using a proof-of-work protocol. The main benefit of a blockchain is faster and more flexible settlement, whereas the challenge is to avoid settlement fails when participants fork the chain to get rid of trading losses.

In this paper, we analyze the presence of time variation in the pass-through from the nominal effective exchange rate to import prices for 24 advanced economies over the period 1995–2015. In line with earlier studies in the literature, we find substantial heterogeneity in the level of exchange rate pass-through across countries.

We present the annual update of the Bank of Canada staff estimates for global potential output growth. These estimates served as key inputs to the analysis supporting the April 2026 Monetary Policy Report.

Understanding what causes the exchange rate to move has been on ongoing challenge for economists. Despite extensive research, traditional macro models of exchange rate determination—with the exception of the Bank of Canada's exchange rate equation—have typically not fared well, motivating economists to explore new ways to model exchange rate movements that incorporate more complex and realistic settings. Within the context of the sharp appreciation of the Canadian dollar in 2003 and 2004, Bailliu and King review the macroeconomic models of exchange rates, as well as the micro-structure studies that highlight the importance of trading mechanisms, information asymmetry, and investor heterogeneity for explaining short-term dynamics in exchange rates. In addition to summarizing the current state of knowledge, they highlight recent advances and identify promising alternative approaches.

Access to information about the future direction of the exchange rate can be extremely valuable in the foreign exchange market. Evidence presented in this article suggests that Canadian dealers are more likely to provide interday liquidity to foreign, rather than Canadian, financial customers, since foreign financial flows can be more informative about future movements in the exchange rate. The author reveals a statistical relationship between the supply of liquidity provided by non-financial firms and that provided by dealing institutions across time, and across markets, and suggests that the relationship between the positions of commercial clients and market-makers, and the role played by dealers in interday liquidity provision, has been understated in the market microstructure literature.

We document the outcome of an options decimalization pilot on Canada’s derivatives exchange. Decimalization improves measures of liquidity and price efficiency. The impact differs by the moneyness of an option and is greatest for out-of-the-money options.

This article provides an overview of the growth of Canadian-dollar-denominated assets in official foreign reserves. Based on International Monetary Fund data and on internal Bank of Canada analysis, we estimate that the total reserve holdings of Canadian-dollar assets increased from negligible levels before 2008 to around US$200 billion in the third quarter of 2013. We discuss the determinants of this increase, as well as its potential impact on Canadian debt markets, for example, lower yields and therefore reduced financing costs for the Government of Canada, and the possible negative impact on market liquidity.

This paper presents Bank of Canada staff’s current assessment of the US neutral rate, along with a newly developed set of models on which that assessment is based. The overall assessment is that the US neutral rate currently lies in a range of 1.75 to 2.75 percent.

This paper evaluates the effects of high-frequency uncertainty shocks on a set of low-frequency macroeconomic variables that are representative of the U.S. economy. Rather than estimating models at the same common low-frequency, we use recently developed econometric models, which allows us to deal with data of different sampling frequencies.