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We investigate the macroeconomic impacts of mothballed businesses—those that closed temporarily—on sectoral equilibrium prices after a negative demand shock. Our results suggest that pandemic fiscal support for temporary closures may have eased inflationary pressures.

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.

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.

We summarize the review and renewal process at four central banks (Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bank of England, Sveriges Riksbank and the US Federal Reserve Bank) and compare them with the process at the Bank of Canada, which has been well-established since 2001.

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.

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.

Given that China accounts for about half of global copper consumption, it is reasonable to expect that any significant change in Chinese copper consumption will have an impact on the global market.

Equilibrium bond-pricing models rely on inflation being bad news for future growth to generate upward-sloping nominal yield curves. We develop a model that can generate upward-sloping nominal and real yield curves by instead using ambiguity about inflation and growth.

The Bank of Canada’s current suite of models faces challenges in addressing network effects that integrate household and firm-level heterogeneity and their behaviours. We develop CANVAS, a Canadian behavioural agent-based model to contribute to the Bank’s next-generation modelling effort. CANVAS improves forecasting performance and expands capacity for model-based scenario analysis.