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Aggregate consumption impacts of heightened job risks during recessions can arise either from ex-ante responses to the fear of unemployment or from ex-post consumption declines due to realized income losses. We use survey-based perceptions of job risk and actual labor market transitions to quantify the relative contributions of these two channels. We further show that belief stickiness limits the extent of ex-ante insurance against job risks.

We study settlement fails for trades in the Government of Canada bond market. We find that settlement fails do not occur independently. Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we examine three drivers of fails.

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.

Contactless payment cards are a competitive alternative to cash. Using Canadian panel data from 2010 to 2017, this study investigates whether contactless credit cards are an important contributor to the decline in the transactional use of cash. 

The recent financial crisis has led to the development of new regulations to control risk in designated payment systems, and the implementation of new credit risk management standards is one of the key issues. In this paper, we study various credit risk management schemes for the Canadian retail payment system (ACSS) that are designed to cover the exposure of a defaulting member.

Conventional models imply that central banks aiming to raise inflation should lower nominal rates and thus stimulate aggregate demand. However, several economists have recently challenged this conventional wisdom in favour of an alternative “neo-Fisherian’’ view under which higher nominal rates might in fact lead to higher inflation.

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.

Is shale oil production in the United States a factor in the 2014 oil price decline? Which methods of payment are commonly accepted by merchants in Canada? Bank researchers share their insights on these topics. They also provide an update on the neutral rate of interest as well as on changes to the Bank’s operational framework for market operations.

While demographic change has been an ongoing process in Canada, labour market implications of an aging population will become more acute in coming years. This article discusses the anticipated slowing in the growth of trend labour input over the coming decades with the aging of the baby boomers, declining fertility rates, and the stabilization of the labour force attachment of women. As the pool of labour shrinks, employers and governments will be looking for ways to address barriers to continued labour force participation and firms will have a greater incentive to find ways of improving labour productivity.

This report presents the details of a new semi-annual survey that will improve the Bank of Canada’s surveillance across the financial system and deepen efforts to engage with financial system participants. The survey collects expert opinions on the risks to and resilience of the Canadian financial system as well as on emerging trends and financial innovations. The report presents an overview of the survey and provides high-level results from the spring 2018 survey.