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When lenders cannot directly identify behavioural and rational borrowers, they use type scoring to track the likelihood of a borrower’s type. This leads to the partial pooling of borrowers, which results in rational borrowers subsidizing borrowing costs for behavioural borrowers. This, in turn, reduces the effectiveness of regulatory policies that target mistakes by behavioural borrowers.

Unexpected changes in interest rates lead small firms to materially change their investment rate. Large firms, in contrast, show a smaller response. This suggests both that financial conditions are an important channel for transmitting monetary policy and that firm characteristics can help us better understand fluctuations in business investment.

Do tariffs affect exchange rates? We look at President Trump’s tweets during talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement and find that anticipation of higher tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico led to an appreciation of the US dollar relative to Canadian and Mexican currency.

Trade liberalizations increase the sales and input purchases of productive firms relative to their less productive domestic competitors. This reallocation affects firms’ market power in their product and input markets. I quantify how the labour market power of employers affects the distribution and size of the gains from trade.

There has been tremendous discussion of Bitcoin, digital currencies and FinTech. However, there is limited empirical evidence of Bitcoin’s adoption and usage. We propose a methodology to collect a nationally representative sample using the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) to track the ubiquity and usage of Bitcoin in Canada.

This paper estimates an open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with Bayesian techniques to analyse the macroeconomic effects of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) quantitative easing (QE) programme. Using data on government debt stocks and yields across maturities, we identify the parameter governing portfolio adjustment in the private sector.

Based on recent research, this article discusses three ways that oil-futures prices can improve our understanding of current conditions and future prospects in the global market for crude oil. First, the response of the oil-futures curve can be used to identify the persistence of oil-price shocks and to obtain an indicator of the rate at which they will diminish. Second, the spread between the current futures price and the spot price of oil can be interpreted as an indicator of the precautionary demand for oil. Third, because oil-futures prices are volatile, forecasts of the future spot price of oil using futures prices should be supplemented with other information to improve their accuracy.

Stock market fundamentals would not seem to meaningfully predict returns over a shorter-term horizon—instead, I shift focus to severe downside risk (i.e., crashes).

Many central banks are contemplating whether to issue central bank digital currency. This piece explores the implications as well as potential motivators of such a step.

The Bank of Canada continues to use the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey (BTCOS) to monitor trends in Canadians’ awareness, ownership and use of Bitcoin. The most recent iteration was conducted in late 2018, following an 85 percent decline in the price of Bitcoin throughout the year.