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Interconnectedness between US states has affected the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the optimal containment policies regulating the movement of goods and people within and between states.

This paper compiles the contemporary view on three major Canadian-led trade policies that have marked Canada’s economic history since Confederation: the National Policy (1879), the Canada–US Agreement on Automotive Products (Auto Pact, 1965) and the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (FTA, 1989, including its extension to the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, 1994).

We study the revision properties of the Bank of Canada’s staff output gap estimates since the mid-1980s. Our results suggest that the average staff output gap revision has decreased significantly over the past 15 years, in line with recent evidence for the U.S.

Across several dimensions of lender of last resort policy, I highlight broad changes that have occurred since the 2008–09 global financial crisis and discuss some of the key challenges, choices and considerations facing the designers of central bank liquidity tools today.

At the Pittsburgh Summit in 2009, G20 countries announced their commitment to clear all standardized over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives through central counterparties (CCPs). Since then, CCPs have become increasingly important and there has been an extensive program of regulatory enhancements to both them and OTC derivatives markets.

Recent consumer and merchant surveys show a decrease in the use of cash at the point of sale. Increasingly, consumers and merchants have access to a growing array of payment innovations as substitutes for cash.

The financial system makes an important contribution to the welfare of all Canadians. The ability of households and firms to confidently hold and transfer financial assets is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Canadian economy.

The Bank of Canada uses several short-term forecasting models for the monitoring of key foreign economies - the United States, the euro area, Japan and China. The design of the forecasting models used for each region is influenced by the level of detail required, as well as the timeliness and volatility of data. Forecasts from different models are typically combined to mitigate model uncertainty, and judgment is applied to the model forecasts to incorporate information that is not directly reflected in the most recent indicators.

A database of historical Government of Canada zero-coupon yield curves developed at the Bank of Canada is introduced in this article, which also includes an initial statistical analysis of the behaviour and evolution of the zero-coupon interest (spot) rates over the full period and two distinct subperiods. Specific areas of interest include the evolution of the levels of key interest rates and yield-curve measures over the sample as well as daily changes in the key interest rates and the yield-curve measures; the identification of a relatively small number of factors that drove the evolution of the yield curve; and the total returns that would have been realized by holding bonds of different maturities for a given holding period.