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In March 2020, the Bank of Canada implemented the Government of Canada Bond Purchase Program, eventually purchasing approximately $340 billion of government bonds. In this paper, we analyze the impact of this program on financial market prices and yields as well as on GDP and inflation.

This special issue, “Real-Financial Linkages,” examines the Bank’s research using theoretical and empirical models to improve its understanding of the linkages between financial and macroeconomic developments in the wake of the recent global financial crisis.

The authors construct a simple general equilibrium model of unemployment and calibrate it to the Canadian economy. Job creation and destruction are endogenous. In this model, they consider several potential factors that could contribute to the long-run increase in the Canadian unempoloyment rate: a more generous unemployment insurance system, higher layoff costs, higher discretionary taxes, […]

Flood, Morin, and Kolet examine the role of house prices in household consumption decisions. Considering a group of advanced economies, the authors find that the strength of the link between house prices and consumer spending depends on the institutional features of national mortgage markets.

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.

Various drivers of business investment can be used to explain the underwhelming performance of investment in advanced economies since the global financial crisis, particularly since 2014. The slow growth in aggregate demand cannot by itself explain the full extent of the recent weakness in investment, which appears to be linked primarily to the collapse of global commodity prices and a rise in economic uncertainty. Looking ahead, business investment growth is likely to remain slower than in the pre-crisis period, largely because of structural factors such as population aging.

The Bank of Canada is one of very few central banks that has made records of the intraday timing of its intervention operations available to researchers.

We propose alternative single-equation semi-structural models for forecasting inflation in Canada, whereby structural New Keynesian models are combined with time-series features in the data. Several marginal cost measures are used, including one that in addition to unit labour cost also integrates relative price shocks known to play an important role in open-economies.

Understanding what causes the exchange rate to move has been on ongoing challenge for economists. Despite extensive research, traditional macro models of exchange rate determination—with the exception of the Bank of Canada's exchange rate equation—have typically not fared well, motivating economists to explore new ways to model exchange rate movements that incorporate more complex and realistic settings. Within the context of the sharp appreciation of the Canadian dollar in 2003 and 2004, Bailliu and King review the macroeconomic models of exchange rates, as well as the micro-structure studies that highlight the importance of trading mechanisms, information asymmetry, and investor heterogeneity for explaining short-term dynamics in exchange rates. In addition to summarizing the current state of knowledge, they highlight recent advances and identify promising alternative approaches.

Can securities be settled on a blockchain and, if so, what are the gains relative to existing settlement systems? We consider a blockchain that ensures delivery versus payment by linking transfers of assets with payments and operates using a proof-of-work protocol. The main benefit of a blockchain is faster and more flexible settlement, whereas the challenge is to avoid settlement fails when participants fork the chain to get rid of trading losses.