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Canada’s economy can build on its traditional strengths by taking advantage of export opportunities in rapidly growing service sectors to overcome the current challenging environment, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen S. Poloz said today.

11:30 (ET)
The Business Outlook Survey is a summary of interviews conducted by the Bank's regional offices with business leaders from about 100 firms, selected in accordance with the composition of Canada's gross domestic product. The Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations is a quarterly survey aimed at measuring household views of inflation, the labour market and household finances, as well as topical issues of interest to the Bank of Canada.

This issue features four articles that present research and analysis by Bank staff. The first focuses on reforming the international monetary system; the second on the role of collateral and haircut policy in central bank lending; and the third on the extraction of information from the Business Outlook Survey using principal-component analysis. The fourth reviews studies that model the counterfeiting of bank notes.

The Bank of Canada today announced the five finalist teams in the 2018–19 edition of The Governor’s Challenge, a competition where university students simulate the role of advisor to the Bank’s Governing Council.

The Bank of Canada has announced the five finalist teams in the 2020-21 edition of The Governor’s Challenge, a competition where university students simulate the role of advisor to the Bank’s Governing Council.

Governor Mark Carney discusses globalization, financial stability and employment.

In this article, the authors explain the methodology used to construct real exchange rate (RER) indexes. They also compare and assess various Canadian RER indexes from both an empirical and conceptual standpoint. The authors conclude that both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the best RER indexes are those based on unit labour costs. They note, however, that, for practical reasons, policy-makers should also consider RER indexes based on prices when formulating monetary policy.

Tariffs and related uncertainty continue to weigh on firms, according to results from the Business Outlook Survey and the Business Leaders’ Pulse. While overall sales outlooks remain weak, outlooks for exports have recovered somewhat, with worst-case trade scenarios appearing less likely. Firms remain cautious in their hiring and investment plans. Some businesses reported cost pressures from tariffs, but competition and weak demand are constraining price pass-through to customers. In this context, firms’ short-term inflation expectations are lower than they were last quarter.

This paper contributes to the debate on the magnitude of exchange rate elasticities by providing a set of price and quantity elasticities for 51 advanced and emerging-market economies. Specifically, for each of these countries we report the elasticity of trade prices and trade quantities on both the export and on the import sides, as well as the reaction of the trade balance.