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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an atypical recession in which some sectors of the economy boomed and others collapsed. This required a unique fiscal policy reaction to both support firms and stimulate activity in sectors with slack. Was fiscal policy able to get where it was needed? Mostly, yes.

In 1996 inflation remained within the Bank’s target range but was subject to downward pressure. The low rate of inflation contributed to a major easing in monetary conditions, and interest rates reached their lowest level in 30 years.

The Canadian economy continued to expand robustly in 2000 while inflation remained low.

We assess whether unconventional monetary and fiscal policy implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. contribute to the 2021-2023 inflation surge through the lens of several different empirical methodologies and establish a null result.

The year that just passed posed many challenges for all Canadians. The slowdown in the global economy became more pronounced as the year went on, and this affected households, businesses, and governments alike. The tragedy of 11 September compounded the economic difficulties and issues facing us all. Through this period of rapidly changing circumstances, the Bank met its responsibilities by responding quickly and vigorously to events in order to underpin confidence and support the economy.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001, it marked a watershed for the world economy. Ten years from now, the opening of China’s capital account and the financial integration that will unfold will be viewed as a milestone of similar importance.

We estimate the effects of economic uncertainty on time use and discuss its macroeconomic implications. We develop a model to demonstrate that substitution between market and non-market work provides an additional insurance margin to households, weakening precautionary savings and labour supply and lowering aggregate demand, ultimately amplifying the contractionary effects of uncertainty.

The Bank of Canada has played an integral role in Canadian society for 70 years. When the Bank opened its doors in the spring of 1935, this country was struggling to define itself and to survive the economic and social turmoil of the Great Depression. Like Canada’s economy, its central bank has evolved and grown over the years. It has faced critical challenges and embraced change. But the Bank’s mandate has not changed. It is now, as it was then, to provide an effective, national monetary authority for Canada.

The Canadian overnight repo market persistently shows signs of latent funding pressure around month-end periods. Both the overnight repo rate and Bank of Canada liquidity provision tend to rise in these windows. This paper proposes three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses to explain this phenomenon.

At the Bank of Canada, we have worked hard over the past several years to define our goals and our methods for achieving them. We have continued to strengthen our monetary policy framework, and we have established priorities in all areas of our operations to help us meet our strategic objectives. In 2002, the Bank set out a medium-term plan for the period 2003–05. The plan’s clearly defined policy frameworks and priorities were critical in guiding our analysis and our decisions in 2003, a year in which Canadians across the country were affected by a number of severe and unanticipated events.