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Immigrants can increase international trade by shifting preferences towards the goods of their country of origin and by reducing bilateral transaction costs. Using geographical variation across U.S. states for the period 2008 to 2013, I estimate the respective causal impact of immigrants on U.S. exports and imports.

This paper develops an economic framework to analyze the exchange rate of virtual currency. Three components are important: first, the current use of virtual currency to make payments; second, the decision of forward-looking investors to buy virtual currency (thereby effectively regulating its supply); and third, the elements that jointly drive future consumer adoption and merchant acceptance of virtual currency.

We expect global potential output growth to increase from 2.5% in 2022 to 2.8% by 2026. Compared with the April 2022 staff assessment, global potential output growth is marginally slower. The current range for the US neutral rate is 2% to 3%, unchanged from the last annual assessment.

The authors examine the liquidity and leverage characteristics of Canadian long-term, open-end mutual funds in terms of their potential systemic effects on the Canadian mutual fund sector and on the Canadian financial system more broadly. In their overall assessment of this sector, they consider the regulation, market size and ownership structure of mutual funds in Canada and provide observations about the industry globally.

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.

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.

Occupations held by females with mid-level education face the highest risk of accelerated automation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We explore the long-run effects of a monetary policy shock in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model built on the micro evidence that job losses lead to persistently lower individual earnings through a combination of skill decay and abandonment of the labour force.