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We identify two channels that affect the relationship between inflation and unemployment. First, inflation lowers wages because unemployed suffer more from inflation than employed, generating a positive relationship. Second, inflation increases firms’ financing costs, generating a negative relationship. Improvements in firm financing conditions can induce the relationship to switch signs.

We both share borders with the United States, the most important export market for each of us. Both Canada and Mexico have recently faced setbacks in cross-border trade with the United States. These stem not only from weaker U.S. domestic demand, but also from specific trade problems and from border-crossing delays associated with tighter security.

Some Canadian sectors and regions are hot and some are not, but all will ultimately reap the benefits of the country’s rich resource endowment, even as some difficult adjustments take place, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen S. Poloz said today in Saskatoon. Canada has been adjusting to two major economic shocks in recent years, Governor […]

This paper quantifies the impact of hurricanes on seaborne international trade to the United States. Matching the timing of hurricane–trade route intersections with monthly U.S. port-level trade data, we isolate the unanticipated effects of a hurricane hitting a trade route using two separate identification schemes: an event study and a local projection.

Helliwell traces the changes that have occurred at the Bank of Canada since the early 1960s, when he first began a long and extensive relationship with the institution and its staff. He begins with his work on the Royal Commission on Banking and Finance (the Porter Commission) and continues over the next 40 years, giving particular focus to the Bank's analytic and research activities. Although he is careful to note the benefits of alternative analytical and information-gathering techniques, such as the extensive mail and direct interview survey that he and his colleagues conducted as part of the Royal Commission, Helliwell devotes most of his attention to the Bank's econometric modelling efforts, starting with RDX1 and RDX2 in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He cites some of the internal, as well as external, obstacles that had to be overcome as the Bank's modelling efforts advanced, and how shifting trends in the economics profession have sometimes posed a challenge. Helliwell concludes that these developments helped the Bank to come of age and take its place in the front ranks of the world's evidence-based policy-research institutions.

This is an account of the deliberations of the Bank of Canada’s Governing Council leading to the monetary policy decision on September 6, 2023.

This monthly newsletter features the latest research publications by Bank of Canada economists including external publications and working papers published on the Bank of Canada’s website.

Global economic growth has been somewhat stronger than projected, with momentum in emerging-market economies increasing noticeably.

When countries are hit by supply shocks, central banks often face the dilemma of either looking through such shocks or reacting to them to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored. In this paper, we propose a tractable framework to capture this dilemma and then explore optimal policy under a range of assumptions about how expectations are formed.

It has been a difficult year. The financial turmoil that began mid-2007 deteriorated into a full-blown global financial crisis through 2008. While the resilience and soundness of the Canadian financial system were in many respects exceptional, the scale of the financial crisis and the subsequent global recession had an increasing impact by year’s end on our financial system and our economy.