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Raising liquidity when funding is stressed creates pressure on the financial market. Liquidating large quantities of assets depresses their prices and may amplify funding shocks. How do banks weathering a funding crisis contribute to contagion risk?

An important channel in the transmission of monetary policy is the relationship between the short-term policy rate and long-term interest rates. Using a new term-structure model, the authors show that the variation in long-term interest rates over time consists of two components: one representing investor expectations of future policy rates, and another reflecting a term-structure risk premium that compensates investors for holding a risky asset. The time variation in the term-structure risk premium is countercyclical and largely determined by global macroeconomic conditions. As a result, long-term rates are pushed up during recessions and down during times of expansion. This is an important phenomenon that central banks need to take into account when using short-term rates as a policy tool.

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.

We quantify the reaction of U.S. equity, bond futures, and exchange rate returns to oil price shocks driven by oil inventory news.

I examine the impact of non-regulated lenders in the mortgage market using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. My model features two types of financial intermediaries that differ in three ways: (i) only regulated intermediaries face a capital requirement, (ii) non-regulated intermediaries finance themselves by selling securities and cannot accept deposits, and (iii) non-regulated intermediaries face a more elastic demand.

In light of the financial crisis and its aftermath, several economists have argued that inflation-targeting central banks should reconsider the level of their inflation targets. While the appropriate level for the inflation target remains an open question, it’s important to note that any transition to a new target would entail certain costs.

Senior Deputy Governor Wilkins discusses funding and market liquidity, and announces consultations on the Bank’s market operations and emergency lending frameworks.

We explore two scenarios for potential output growth to gain insights into the economic consequences associated with different possible trade policies. Scenario 1 includes limited US tariffs on Canadian exports. Scenario 2 adds a permanent, broad-based 25% increase in US tariffs on imports from all countries excluding Canada and Mexico.

The three articles in this issue provide an overview of the monetary policy decision-making process at the Bank of Canada, a discussion of Bank research on the assessment of vulnerabilities in the financial system and a description of recent fragmentation in Canadian equity markets.