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The physical network of bank branches is important in how consumers manage their cash holdings. This paper estimates how consumer withdrawal behaviour responds to the distance they must travel to their branch.

The initiatives reviewed by the author were undertaken to ensure a liquid and well-functioning market for Government of Canada securities in light of the significant shift in the government's financial position. They include changes made in 1998 by the Bank of Canada and the government to the rules governing auctions and to the Bank's surveillance of the auction process, changes to the treasury bill and bond programs, and implementation of a pilot buyback program for Government of Canada marketable bonds. In addition, the Investment Dealers Association of Canada adopted a code of conduct for the secondary market. These initiatives were well received by the market and appear to have had a positive impact. The Bank and the government are, however, continuing their search for ways to maintain and enhance the efficiency of this market.

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.

In this issue, Bank researchers discuss inflation dynamics and global trade following the 2007–09 financial crisis. Other articles explore changes to the governance and regulation of the Canadian payments system and outline the banking services provided by the Bank of Canada. Finally, the results of the 2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey are presented.

How might one simulate a million realistic income paths and compute their statistical moments in under a second? Using CUDA-based methods to estimate the Canadian earnings process, I find that the distribution of labour income growth is sharply peaked with heavy tails—similar to that in the United States.

We use narrative evidence along with a novel database of real-time data and forecasts from the Bank of Canada's staff economic projections from 1974 to 2015 to construct a new measure of monetary policy shocks and estimate the effects of monetary policy in Canada.

In an economy where production takes place in multiple stages and is subject to financial frictions, how firms finance intermediate inputs matters for aggregate outcomes. This paper focuses on trade credit—the lending and borrowing of input goods between firms—and quantifies its aggregate impacts during the Great Recession.

In the interest of better understanding the impact of the Bank of Canada's policy actions on bond and bill yields, Andreou assesses the impact of policy-rate announcements on short and long bonds over the period 1996 to 2004. To aid the analysis, policy actions are decomposed into expected and surprise components. He also examines whether the introduction of fixed announcement dates (FADs) has affected these results, including markets' perceptions. The main finding is that unexpected policy actions by the Bank have a significant effect on market rates at the shorter end of the yield curve, with the effect dissipating as the maturity increases. A second finding, that the impact on longer-term interest rates of a surprise action by the Bank has diminished since the introduction of the FADs, suggests that the Bank's long-term policy goals are well understood and credible.

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.

Can central bank and government policies impact the risks around the outlook for GDP growth? We find that fiscal stimulus makes strong GDP growth more likely—even more so when monetary policy is constrained—rather than weak GDP growth less likely. Thus, fiscal stimulus should accelerate the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.