Central banks conduct research involving in-depth interviews with external parties—but little is known about how this information affects monetary policy. We address this gap by analyzing open-ended interviews with senior central bank economic and policy staff who work closely with policy decision-makers.
We use retail payment data in conjunction with machine learning techniques to predict the effects of COVID-19 on the Canadian economy in near-real time. Our model yields a significant increase in macroeconomic prediction accuracy over a linear benchmark model.
The Bank of Canada today held its target for the overnight rate at the effective lower bound of ¼ percent, with the Bank Rate at ½ percent and the deposit rate at ¼ percent.
While a second wave of COVID-19 is hurting Canadians now, the economy should rebound strongly later in the year. The Bank is forecasting growth of around 4 percent this year and close to 5 percent in 2022.
As previously announced, the Bank of Canada (the Bank) launched on April 1, 2020 a program to purchase Government of Canada securities in the secondary market – the Government Bond Purchase Program (GBPP).
Access quarterly results from the Business Outlook Survey (BOS) based on interviews with firms in the primary, manufacturing, CITU, trade, FIRE, and CPBS sectors.
Access quarterly results from the Business Outlook Survey (BOS) based on interviews with firms from the Atlantic region, Québec, Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and Yukon.
Every quarter, the Bank of Canada surveys about 100 firms and publishes the resulting narrative and related data in the Business Outlook Survey (BOS). Firms are asked to participate based on several criteria—most importantly, their region, sector and size.