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Extreme weather events contribute to increased volatility in both economic activity and prices, interfering with the assessment of the true underlying trends of the economy. With this in mind, we conduct a timely assessment of the impact of natural disasters on Canadian gross domestic product (GDP).

The recent global crisis was characterized by a remarkable intensity in the negative feedback process between financial sector developments and the real economy.

Business investment has been lower than expected in Canada and abroad since the financial crisis of 2007–09. This corporate investment gap is mirrored in firms’ other financing decisions, as they have increased cash holdings and dividend payments and decreased issuance of debt and equity.

We assess the importance of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) in Canada using both firm- and worker-level microdata. In particular, we analyze employer-level administrative data from the Major Wage Settlements (MWS) and household-based survey data from the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID).

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.

Canada plans to adopt a retail payment system to allow Canadians to pay in real time (or near real time) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, the traditional model for setting the overnight interest rate does not operate 24/7.

This article provides a broad perspective on the performance of the labour market in Canada and the United States since the Great Recession. It also presents a simple way to summarize much of this information in a single composite labour market indicator (LMI) for both countries. The LMI suggests that the unemployment rate in Canada has evolved largely in line with overall labour market conditions since the recession, but may have modestly overstated the extent of recent improvement. The U.S. unemployment rate, in contrast, appears to have substantially overstated the post-recession improvement in labour market conditions.

We present the daily time series of the outstanding amounts of all Government of Canada marketable debt securities from July 2001 to June 2017.

We estimate a panel error correction model for loan loss provisions, using unique supervisory data on flow of funds into and out of the allowance for loan losses of 25 Dutch banks in the post-2008 crisis period. We find that these banks aim for an allowance of 49% of impaired loans.

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.