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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.

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.

COVID-19 affects technology adoption: online job postings for technology-related occupations fall less during pandemic lockdowns and pick up faster during reopenings than postings for more traditional occupations.

Existing literature documents that house prices respond to monetary policy surprises with a significant delay, taking years to reach their peak response. We present new evidence of a much faster response.

How do a country’s exports change when its currency depreciates? Does it matter which forces drive the exchange rate deprecation in the first place? We find that this relationship varies greatly depending on what drives exchange rate movements, and we conclude that the direct relationship between the exchange rate and exports is weak for Canada.

Assessing insolvency dynamics is essential for evaluating the financial health of non-financial corporations and mitigating macroeconomic and financial stability risks. This study leverages a newly created Statistics Canada dataset linking insolvency records with firm-level financial data to develop a robust framework for monitoring insolvency risk

Liquidity demands in real-time gross settlement payment systems can be enormous. To reduce the liquidity requirement, central banks around the world have implemented liquidity savings mechanisms (LSMs).

The impact of COVID-19 on Canadian households’ debt and unplanned savings varies by household income. Low-income and high-income households accrued unplanned savings, while middle-income households tended to accumulate more debt.

I show how to combine large numbers of forecasts using several approaches within the framework of a Bayesian predictive synthesis. I find techniques that choose and combine a handful of forecasts, known as global-local shrinkage priors, perform best.