Search

Standard new trade models depict producers as heterogeneous in total factor productivity. In this paper, I adapt the Eaton and Kortum (2002) model of international trade to incorporate tradable intermediate goods and producer heterogeneity in value-added productivity.

Growth has slowed in many emerging-market economies (EMEs) since the 2007–09 global financial crisis, reflecting both cyclical and structural factors. In this context, it will be in-creasingly important for EMEs to raise potential growth by maintaining steady progress on structural reforms. How do structural reforms generally support growth? What are the re-form priorities for EMEs over recent history and today? Finally, what will be the impact of planned structural reforms on potential output growth among the world’s larger EMEs? These are some of the questions considered by the authors.

Because commodity prices help determine Canada’s terms of trade, employment, income and, ultimately, inflation, it is important to understand what causes them to fluctuate. Since the early 1900s, there have been four commodity price supercycles—which we define as extended periods of boom and bust that can take decades to complete. Now in its downswing phase, the current supercycle started after growth in China and other emerging-market economies in the mid-1990s resulted in an unexpected demand shock. The extent of this downswing depends on numerous factors that are presently uncertain.

Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri discusses the historical evolution and future prospects for Canadian exports.

Using a novel data set for 17 countries dating from 1900 to 2013, we characterize business cycles in both small developed and developing countries in a model with financial frictions and a common shock structure. We estimate the model jointly for these 17 countries using Bayesian methods.

Between mid-2014 and early 2016, oil prices fell by roughly 65 per cent. This note documents the channels through which this oil price decline is expected to affect the global economy. One important and immediate channel is through higher expenditures, especially in net oil-importing countries.

Governor Stephen S. Poloz talks about the adjustments that savers and companies need to make in response to low interest rates, and economic policies that can help.

BIS interbank lending data show that the Great Recession generated large and persistent changes in the international interbank lending positions of various countries. The main objective of this study is to understand the role of changes in international interbank credit flows in transmitting shocks across borders.

Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins discusses the financial stability risks associated with slow growth and low interest rates, and explores strategies to mitigate them.

In the second half of 2014, oil prices experienced a sharp decline, falling more than 50 per cent between June 2014 and January 2015. A cursory glance at this oil price crash suggests similarities to developments in 1986, when the price of oil declined by more than 50 per cent, initiating an episode of relatively low oil prices that lasted for more than a decade.