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2120 Results

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in Canada: Evidence Against a “Greasing Effect”

Staff working paper 2017-31 Joel Wagner
The existence of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) has often been used to justify a positive inflation target. It is traditionally assumed that positive inflation could “grease the wheels” of the labour market by putting downward pressure on real wages, easing labour market adjustments during a recession.
February 21, 2013

The U.S. Recovery from the Great Recession: A Story of Debt and Deleveraging

The U.S. recovery from the Great Recession has been slow relative to other postwar-era recoveries in the United States. Encouraged by loose lending standards in the pre-crisis period, U.S. households took on unsustainable amounts of debt, making them vulnerable to adverse shocks. Subsequently, a considerable drop in asset prices forced households to repair their balance sheets. While there has been progress in household deleveraging, the government sector now needs to delever, which will restrain growth over the next few years.
Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E6, E60

The Value of Mortgage Choice: Payment Structure and Contract Length

Staff working paper 2026-2 Michael Boutros, Nuno Clara, Katya Kartashova
We study household mortgage choice in a model with three mortgage contracts that differ in their payment structures: fixed-rate fixed-payment, variable-rate variable-payment, and a hybrid variable-rate fixed-payment mortgage where interest rate changes affect principal repayment rather than payment size. We calibrate the model to match mortgage choice patterns in Canada, where all these options are offered with short terms. We demonstrate that restricting contract choice or mandating long terms, as in the U.S. system, can lead to substantial welfare losses by limiting risk management strategies and increasing mortgage pricing ex-ante.
November 23, 2004

Real Return Bonds: Monetary Policy Credibility and Short-Term Inflation Forecasting

The break-even inflation rate (BEIR) is calculated by comparing the yields on conventional and Real Return Bonds. Defined as the average rate of inflation that equates the expected returns on these two bonds, the BEIR has the potential to contain useful information about long-run inflation expectations. Yet the BEIR has been higher, on average, and more variable than survey measures of inflation expectations, which may be explained by the effects of premiums and distortions embedded in the BEIR. Because of the difficulty in accounting for these distortions, the BEIR should not be given a large weight as a measure of long-run inflation expectations at this time. However, as the Real Return Bond market continues to develop, the BEIR should become a more useful indicator of inflation expectations. At present, it demonstrates no clear advantage over survey measures and even past inflation rates in forecasting near-term inflation.

Parallel Tempering for DSGE Estimation

Staff working paper 2024-13 Joshua Brault
I develop a population-based Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm known as parallel tempering to estimate dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. Parallel tempering approximates the posterior distribution of interest using a family of Markov chains with tempered posteriors.
March 25, 2022

A world of difference: Households, the pandemic and monetary policy

Remarks (delivered virtually) Sharon Kozicki Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy Conference San Francisco, California
Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Sharon Kozicki discusses how differences among households affect economic outcomes, how shocks can have important uneven effects across households, and why these things matter for monetary policy.
November 11, 2008

The Market Impact of Forward-Looking Policy Statements: Transparency vs. Predictability

Central banks continuously strive to improve how they communicate to financial markets and the public in order to increase transparency. For this reason, many central banks have begun to include guidance on the policy rate in the form of forward-looking statements in their communications. This article examines the debate over the usefulness of providing such statements from both theoretical and empirical standpoints. The evidence presented here suggests that the use of forward-looking statements in Bank of Canada communications has made the Bank more predictable, but not necessarily more transparent.

The Side Effects of Safe Asset Creation

Staff working paper 2021-34 Sushant Acharya, Keshav Dogra
The secular decline in real interest rates has created a challenge for monetary policy, now confronting the zero lower bound more often. An increase in the supply of safe assets reduces downward pressure on the natural interest rate. This allows monetary policy to reach price stability and full employment, but not without cost—permanently lower investment.
November 17, 2011

Bank of Canada Review - Autumn 2011

This issue features four articles that present research and analysis by Bank staff. The first focuses on reforming the international monetary system; the second on the role of collateral and haircut policy in central bank lending; and the third on the extraction of information from the Business Outlook Survey using principal-component analysis. The fourth reviews studies that model the counterfeiting of bank notes.

Uncovering Subjective Models from Survey Expectations

Staff working paper 2025-31 Chenyu Hou, Tao Wang
This paper shows that survey expectations can be used to uncover how households subjectively think about inflation and unemployment dynamics jointly. The commonly documented "stagflation view", namely the households' tendency to associate inflation with a worse labor market, implies amplified impacts of supply shocks and dampened ones of demand shocks.
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