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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.

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.

In complex and interconnected banking systems, counterparty risk does not depend only on the risk of the immediate counterparty but also on the risk of others in the network of exposures.

Using highly disaggregated transaction-level trade data, we document the importance of new firm-level trade partner relationships and the addition of new products to existing relationships in driving aggregate trade flows.

This paper presents updated estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2022. Global potential output growth is expected to decline sharply in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and recover partially by the end of the projection horizon of the October 2020 Monetary Policy Report.

This paper examines household-level data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations (CSCE) to understand households’ expectations about price and wage inflation, how those expectations link to views about labour market conditions and the subsequent impact on households’ outlook for real spending growth.

This paper studies the effects of financial development, taking into account both formal and informal financing. Using cross-country firm-level data, we document that informal financing is utilized more by rich countries than poor countries.

Consumers’ perceptions of current inflation remain elevated and are diverging from actual inflation. Perceptions of high inflation are also leading to persistently high expectations for inflation over the next 12 months. Consumers’ expectations for interest rates one year from now also remain high, and many consumers believe that the impacts of higher interest rates on their household spending are far from over. Homeowners with a variable-rate mortgage are more likely than other consumers to report being worse off due to high interest rates. Consumers’ plans to purchase services, such as vacations or concerts, are more widespread than plans to make major purchases of goods that are likely to be financed with loans, such as vehicles or appliances. Workers are reporting signs of job market cooling, such as more time spent looking for a new job, but they remain confident about the labour market.

The degree to which financial constraint is binding is often not directly observable in commonly used business data sets (e.g., Compustat). In this paper, we measure and estimate the likelihood of a firm being constrained by external financing using a data set of small- and medium-sized Canadian firms.