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Some analysts believe that a sharp rise in equity values was an important factor in the strong consumer spending between 1995 and 2000. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that consumer spending responds more to changes in housing wealth than it does to equity wealth.

Governor Tiff Macklem discusses how business investment and stronger productivity are vital to sustaining non-inflationary economic growth.

Gosselin examines and reports on the various factors that contribute to successful inflation targeting. Using a panel of 21 inflation-targeting countries over the period 1990Q1-2007Q2, Gosselin finds that the ability of central banks to hit their targets varies considerably. Some of these differences can be explained by exchange rate fluctuations, fiscal deficits, and differences in financial development. Others are explained by differences in the targeting framework itself and the manner in which it is implemented.

This issue includes analysis of the unconventional monetary policies recently implemented by central banks, and also presents Bank research in two areas - the migration of labour between economic regions in Canada, and the asset-allocation and funding decisions for Canada’s foreign exchange reserves.

In this analytical note we show that the share of the systematic variations in the Canadian dollar has risen significantly in the past two decades. Systematic variations in the exchange rate are shared with other currencies. This parallels the equity market, where variations in the price of a given stock are shared with variations in the prices of other stocks.

I use firm-product-level data for Canadian online retailers to study how product scope (the average number of product categories per firm) evolved from 1999 to 2012. During this period, product scope dropped monotonically from 59 to 5 product categories.

In a virtual address to the Canadian Association for Business Economics, Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri discusses the difference between how Canadians perceive inflation and the actual measured rate. He explains why that gap may exist and what it could mean for monetary policy and the economy.

The resurgence of sizable current account imbalances in the major economies in recent years, particularly the tripling of the U.S. deficit, has led to renewed academic and public discussions about their sustainability. Jacob's main objective is to show that current account balances are simply the outcome of various relative structural and cyclical forces between trading partners. He reviews the factors behind the changes in the current account positions of the three largest industrial economies (the United States, Japan, and the euro area). Two strong determinants shaping the current account balances are the faster increase in U.S. productivity compared with that of other major economies and, more recently, the loosening in the U.S. fiscal stance. Jacob also reviews a range of outside assessments from such sources as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, as well as the academic literature, to determine the possible risks to macroeconomic and financial stability.

In this article, the authors review work done at the Bank of Canada and at other central banks with the relatively new application of network analysis to the study of payments systems.