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As economic slack continues to be absorbed and the labour market tightens, wage growth and inflation could increase faster than expected, which would suggest convexity in their Phillips curves. This note investigates whether there is convexity in the Phillips curves for Canadian wage growth and inflation by testing different empirical approaches over the post-inflation-targeting period.

This paper finds that debt-financed government spending multipliers vary considerably depending on the location of the debt buyer. In a sample of 33 countries, we find that government spending multipliers are larger when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to foreign investors (non-residents), compared with when government purchases are financed by issuing debt to home investors (residents).

Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses labour markets in Canada.

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 issue features a summary of the Bank’s annual conference, Financial Intermediation and Vulnerabilities, which took place in October 2012, as well as two articles that present analysis of international macroeconomic coordination since the global financial crisis and the U.S. recovery from the Great Recession.

Cover page

The Millennial Celebrations in Ancient Rome

The coins pictured on the cover range from approximately 20 to 35 mm in diameter and form part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Photography by Gord Carter, Ottawa

Capital markets and their related financial instruments make an important contribution to the welfare of Canadians. The Bank of Canada is interested in the efficient functioning of capital markets through each of its responsibilities for monetary policy, the financial system, and funds management. Hendry and King highlight the key findings of Bank research published over the past year that addresses capital market efficiency and summarize lessons that have been learned. The research conducted thus far suggests that Canadian capital markets are efficient for a capital market of Canada's size but are less diverse than the U.S. capital markets, indicating that there is room for improvement in certain areas.

We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Increases in the Chair’s text-, voice-, or face-emotion indices during these testimonies generally raise stock prices and lower their volatility.

Donald Gow had a great interest in public administration and in budgetary reform in the federal government.1 He was one in a long line of Queen's professors who have focused on various budgetary matters at the federal level.

Using two complementary approaches, we investigate the importance of U.S. macroeconomic news in driving low-frequency fluctuations in the term structure of interest rates in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We find that U.S. macroeconomic news is particularly important to explain changes in the expectation components of the nominal, real and break-even inflation rates of small open economies.