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What is the role of central banks in financial stability? How has this role changed in recent years? Bank researchers share their insights on this matter and provide an overview of recent changes the Bank has made to its Emergency Lending Assistance Policy. Researchers also provide a history of four major commodity supercycles, dating back to the early 1900s. Finally, there is discussion about structural reforms in emerging-market economies, such as China, and how these reforms influence potential growth.

Assets in tax-deferred retirement accounts (TDA) and housing are two major components of household portfolios. In this paper, we develop a life-cycle model to examine the interaction between households’ use of TDA and their housing decisions.

This issue features three articles that present research and analysis by Bank of Canada staff. The first updates previous Bank estimates of measurement bias in the Canadian consumer price index; the second uses a new term-structure model to analyze the relationship between the short-term policy rate and long-term interest rates; and the third examines indicators of balance-sheet risks at financial institutions in Canada.

This study updates our measure of Canadians' access to cash through automated banking machines and financial institution branches. We find that in 2023 overall access to cash remains stable, while rural Canadians continue having less access.

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.

A nation's productivity is the prime determinant of its real incomes and standard of living, as well as being a major determinant of its potential output. In the short run, deviations of actual output from potential output are a useful indicator of inflationary pressures. This article is a short summary of the proceedings of the workshop, which focus on productivity and potential output growth among industrialized countries. The research is organized under three main themes: estimating potential growth; productivity and growth; and institutions, policies, and growth.

We study the transmission and third-country effects of international sanctions. A sanctioned country’s losses are mitigated, and the sanctioning country’s losses amplified, if a third country does not join the sanctions, but the third country benefits from not joining.

We develop an algorithm and run it on a hybrid quantum annealing solver to find an ordering of payments that reduces the amount of system liquidity necessary without substantially increasing payment delays.

The Bitcoin Omnibus Survey is an important tool for monitoring Canadians’ awareness and ownership of bitcoin and other cryptoassets over time. In this paper, we present data highlights from the 2023 survey.

We identify and quantify fiscal news shocks, compiling events (2001–2023) that altered the expected path of U.S. defense expenditure. For each event, we estimate market-implied shifts in expected spending. A shift-share analysis yields a two-year, metropolitan statistical area–level GDP multiplier of approximately 1 for U.S. military build-ups.