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Some suggest the global economy is facing a fourth industrial revolution. Bank researchers discuss the possible implications of digitalization on the economy. This issue also shares insights on the effectiveness of some unconventional monetary policies in a small open economy, how Government of Canada bonds are used throughout their life cycle, as well as how the Big Six Canadian banks choose their funding strategies and why. The final article examines the slow growth in business investment.

Fluctuations in the prices of various natural resource products are of concern in both policy and business circles; hence, it is important to develop accurate price forecasts.

In this paper, we argue that differences in the cost structures across sectors play an important role in firms’ decisions to adjust their prices. We develop a menu-cost model of pricing in which retail firms intermediate trade between producers and consumers.

The Bank projects that the economy will grow by 2.2 per cent in 2012, 2.3 per cent in 2013 and 2.4 per cent in 2014. The economy is expected to return to full capacity by the end of 2013.

This paper studies optimal need-based financial aid when parental transfers—unobserved by policymakers—vary across and within families of similar means. Using data on U.S. college students, I document substantial inequality in parental transfers, especially among wealthier families. I then analyze how this affects aid design aimed at reducing inefficiencies from borrowing constraints and the aid itself.

This paper examines empirically the impact of financial stress on the transmission of monetary policy shocks in Canada. The model used is a threshold vector autoregression in which a regime change occurs if financial stress conditions cross a critical threshold.

Historical narratives typically associate financial crises with credit expansions and asset price misalignments. The question is whether some combination of measures of credit and asset prices can be used to predict these events.

The authors investigate interest-rate aspects of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy instruments in Canada, focussing on the stability of the relationships between some key interest rates and the instruments of monetary policy. To determine what shifts may have occurred in recent years, they describe movements in rate differentials, apply cointegration tests and estimate error-correction […]

The Bank of Canada's new Quarterly Projection Model, QPM, combines the short-term dynamic properties necessary to support regular economic projections with the consistent behavioural structure necessary for policy analysis.

Why do BigTech platforms introduce payment services? We explore this using a model in which a monopoly platform faces a trade-off between the costs associated with privacy concerns and the revenue from data services. We then analyze the feedback effects between data and payments.