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The authors investigate whether the aggregation of region-specific forecasts improves upon the direct forecasting of Canadian GDP growth.

We construct a multi-country affine term structure model that contains unspanned macroeconomic and foreign exchange risks. The canonical version of the model is derived and is shown to be easy to estimate.

Commentary and technical data relating to the 2021 renewal.

The author describes the construction of the U.S.-dollar-denominated zero-coupon curve for the supranational asset class from 1995 to 2010. He uses yield data from a crosssection of bonds issued by AAA-rated supranational entities to fit the Svensson (1995) term-structure model.

We investigate the unintended consequences of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). Originally designed to help borrowers refinance after the 2008–09 global financial crisis, HARP inadvertently strengthened the market power of incumbent lenders by creating a cost advantage for them. Despite a 2013 policy rectifying this cost advantage, we still find significant welfare losses for borrowers.

The authors address empirically the implications of structural breaks in the variance-covariance matrix of inflation and import prices for changes in pass-through.

The authors analyze the dynamics of national saving–investment relationships to determine the degree of international capital mobility.

We perform an analysis to determine how well the introduction of a countercyclical loanto- value (LTV) ratio can reduce household indebtedness and housing price fluctuations compared with a monetary policy rule augmented with house price inflation.

Rising levels of household indebtedness have created concerns about the vulnerabilities of households to adverse economic shocks and the impact on financial stability. To assess these risks, the author presents a formal stress-testing framework that uses microdata to simulate how various economic shocks affect the distribution of the debt-service ratio (DSR) for the household sector.

Consumers often purchase more than one differentiated product, assembling a portfolio, which might potentially affect substitution patterns of demand and, as a consequence, oligopolistic firms’ pricing strategies.