Search

We analyze monetary policy responses to AI in a two-sector New Keynesian model, distinguishing augmentation and automation. Both reduce labor demand, requiring accommodation that creates inflation trade-offs. Automation worsens them. Aggregate inflation depends on AI’s form and breadth, making policy stabilization more complex and aggregate data potentially misleading.

This paper proposes a practical approach to address the procyclicality of initial margin at central counterparties (CCPs) that can work even in periods of extreme stress. The approach allows CCPs to limit the speed of margin increases resulting from spikes in market volatility.

Just before the pandemic began, the Bank of Canada conducted the 2020 Wage-Setting Survey. The goal was to explore the unusual trend of subdued wage growth in 2018 and 2019 despite a tightening in the labour market. Although this wage puzzle was beginning to resolve at the time of the survey, results highlight changes in several factors that may have important impacts on wage dynamics.

With increasing levels of household debt in recent years, the number of households that may be vulnerable to a negative economic shock is rising as well. Decisions made by both the debtor and the creditor can contribute to insolvency. This article presents some stylized facts about insolvency in Canada’s household sector and analyzes the role of creditors in insolvencies. The average debt of an individual filing for bankruptcy is more than 1.5 times that of an average Canadian household; bankruptcy filers tend to be unemployed or in low-wage jobs, and are typically renters. The article reports that banks that approve more loans per branch, which is interpreted as less-intensive use of soft information (such as the loan officer’s assessment of the applicant’s character), experience more client bankruptcies. This finding has important policy implications, because financial institutions that do not use soft information risk further deterioration in their lending portfolios.

Narrow Money—Transactions Money The growth rate of the narrow monetary aggregates picked up in 1999, reflecting the expansion in economic activity and the stabilization of interest rates. The sharp acceleration of the narrow aggregates in recent months suggests buoyant growth in GDP in coming quarters. Signs of a possible rise in inflation are also emerging. Over the longer run, for inflation to remain in the Bank's 1 to 3 per cent target range, the growth of narrow money would have to slow down from its current pace. In 1999, the growth rate of M1 also began to converge with that of the other narrow aggregates, M1+ and M1++. This suggests that the influence of the special factors that have been affecting the growth rate of M1 has diminished. Broad Money—"Store of Value" Household savings represent deferred consumption, and therefore the broad monetary aggregate provides information about future spending and, hence, inflation. In 1999, the very broad measure of money, M2++, grew at much the same rate as it did in 1998. This outcome is in line with inflation remaining in the inflation-control target range over the next couple of years.

Business cycles are substantially correlated across countries. Yet most existing models are not able to generate substantial transmission through international trade. We show that the nature of such transmission depends fundamentally on the features determining the responsiveness of labor supply and labor demand to international relative prices.

In 1991, Canada became the second country to adopt an inflation target as a central pillar of its monetary policy framework. The regime has proven much more successful than initially expected, both in achieving price stability and in stabilizing the real economy against a wide range of shocks.

In this note we examine how monetary policy affects housing demand, supply and prices in Canada, and whether these effects vary with labour market conditions

We provide empirical evidence of effects to the aggregate economy from surprises about financial intermediaries’ net worth based on a high-frequency identification strategy. We estimate that news of a 1% decline in intermediaries’ net worth leads to a 0.2%–0.4% decrease in the market value of nonfinancial firms.

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.