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There have been positive developments in the global financial system since the June Financial System Review, in part reflecting some encouraging signs about the global economy. At the same time, significant vulnerabilities remain. The Governing Council judges that the overall risk to the stability of Canada’s financial system has decreased from “high” to “elevated” over the past six months.

In this paper, we study the impact of supply shocks on the Canadian real exchange rate. We specify a structural vector-error-correction model that links the real exchange rate to different fundamentals.

Growth in the global economy began to slow in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008. This reflected the effects of the slowdown in the U.S. economy and ongoing dislocations in global financial markets.

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.

Since 2002, spreads on emerging market sovereign debt have fallen to historical lows. Given the close links between sovereign spreads, capital flows to emerging markets, and economic growth, understanding the factors driving these spreads is very important. We address this issue in two stages.

This is a report of the Governing Council of the Bank of Canada: Mark Carney, Tiff Macklem, John Murray, Timothy Lane, Jean Boivin and Agathe Côté. It presents the Bank’s outlook based on data received up to 8 April 2011.

Economic growth in Canada is expected to pick up, supported by past interest rate cuts, and inflation is projected to remain close to the 2% target.

Growth in Canada’s economy is expected to reach 1.4 per cent this year and accelerate to 2.4 per cent in 2017.

The Bank of Canada’s annual conference, held in October 2010, brought together leading researchers from universities and central banks around the world.

The Bank of Canada's commitment is to contribute to the economic well-being of Canadians. This means conducting monetary policy so that it fosters sustained economic growth - by creating conditions that favour rising output, employment, and incomes, and a stable macroeconomic environment.