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The Canadian economy continues to adjust to major global developments.

Over the past year, Canada’s economy has outperformed the economies of virtually all the other major industrial countries.

In 2005, the Bank of Canada celebrated its 70th anniversary. Since the Bank opened its doors in March 1935, it has evolved into a national institution at the heart of Canada’s economy. We had a lot to celebrate in 2005—particularly our progress over the past 70 yearsand our continuing contribution to the economic and financial well-being of Canadians.

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

We study the importance of supply constraints in explaining the heterogeneity in house price cycles across geographies in the United States.

We study how the distribution of information supply by the news media affects the macroeconomy. We find that media coverage focuses particularly on the largest firms, and that firms’ equity financing and investment increase after media coverage. But these equity and investment responses are largest among small, rarely covered firms. Our quantitative studies highlight that the aggregate effects of media coverage depend crucially on how that coverage is allocated.

The authors examine how the use of extreme value theory yields collateral requirements that are robust to extreme fluctuations in the market price of the asset used as collateral.

Two major issues dominate the analysis and policy discussion in this Monetary Policy Report: the nature and extent of the global economic slowdown that began late last year and the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the United States.

In our analysis of the US productivity slowdown in the 1970s and 2000s, we find that a significant portion of this deceleration can be attributed to a lack of improvement in allocative efficiency across sectors. Our analysis further identifies increased sector-level volatility as a major contributor to this lack of improvement in allocative efficiency.

Our study aims to gain insight on financial stability and climate transition risk. We develop a methodological framework that captures the direct effects of a stressful climate transition shock as well as the indirect—or systemic—implications of these direct effects. We apply this framework using data from the Canadian financial system.