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The authors examine whether monetary policy should and could do more to lean against financial imbalances (such as those associated with asset-price bubbles or unsustainable credit expansion) as they are building up, or whether its role should be limited to cleaning up the economic consequences as the imbalances unwind.

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered policy challenges related to the economic measures that were taken to support the economy. Two years later, we attempt to identify the broader impact of these measures and research that needs to follow.

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.

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 […]

In this paper we explore the nexus between cross-border trade integration and monetary policy. We first review the evidence that trade liberalization has increased the degree of integration in North America and conclude that, while robust structural inferences remain elusive, there is sufficient supporting evidence for central banks to treat the issue seriously.

We propose a new strength measure of the global financial cycle by estimating a regime-switching factor model on cross-border equity flows for 61 countries. We then assess how the strength of the global financial cycle affects monetary policy independence, which is defined as the response of central banks' policy interest rates to exogenous changes in inflation.

The number of job gains and losses across firms in Canada each year is roughly one-fifth the total number of jobs and generally occurs within sectors (industries) rather than across sectors. Since labour reallocation within sectors has been strongly related to productivity growth in Canada, defining the key drivers of this type of reallocation is important, given the higher rates of reallocation and productivity growth in the Untied States than in Canada. This article finds that the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and rising commodity prices led to above-average reallocation of labour across sectors over the 2005-08 period, but that the impact on productivity has been minor. Labour reallocation across firms, however, generates substantial labour productivity gains in manufacturing and the business sector as a whole.