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How do banks' interconnections in the euro area contribute to the vulnerability of the banking system? We study both the direct interconnections (banks lend to each other) and the indirect interconnections (banks are exposed to similar sectors of the economy). These complex linkages make the banking system more vulnerable to contagion risks.

Growth in the Canadian economy has been essentially in line with the expectations set out in the Bank’s January Monetary Policy Report Update.

The five articles in this issue present research and analysis by Bank staff covering a variety of topics: the growth of Canadian-dollar-denominated assets in official foreign reserves; the emergence of platform-based digital currencies; methods of forecasting the real price of oil; measures of uncertainty in monetary policy; and the recent performance of the labour market in Canada and the United States.

We develop a principal-agent model of cyber-attacking with fee-paying clients who delegate security decisions to financial platforms. We derive testable implications about clients’ vulnerability to cyber attacks and about the fees charged.

With inflation remaining low for the sixth consecutive year, the Canadian economy recorded a strong expansion of about 4 per cent through 1997.

There have been a number of significant economic and financial developments since the time of the July Monetary Policy Report Update.

In the year just ended, the global economy faced a number of exceptional challenges, reflecting a wide range of economic, financial, and geopolitical risks and uncertainties. These included the fallout from the September 2001 terrorist attacks, corporate accounting scandals, stock market volatility, and developments in the Middle East. Despite this global backdrop, the Canadian economy outperformed virtually all other industrial economies, growing by about 3 1/4 per cent and creating 560,000 jobs, while inflation expectations remained well anchored to the Bank of Canada’s 2 per cent inflation-control target.

Six months ago, at the time of the last Monetary Policy Report, the global economic and financial environment was volatile and highly uncertain because of the adverse situation in Asia and the fallout from the Russian debt moratorium.

We study the formation of price bubbles on experimental asset markets where cash earns interest. There are two main conclusions.

Household debt can be an important source of vulnerability to the financial system. This technical report describes the Household Risk Assessment Model (HRAM) that has been developed at the Bank of Canada to stress test household balance sheets at the individual level.