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We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable.

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence on the factors that motivated emerging economies to change their capital outflow controls in recent decades. Liberalization of capital outflow controls can allow emerging-market economies (EMEs) to reduce net capital inflow (NKI) pressures, but may cost their governments the fiscal revenues that external financial repression generates.

Using a new data set, we examine the characteristics and dynamics of cross-border mergers and acquisitions during emerging-market financial crises, that is, so-called “fire-sale FDI.” Our findings shed fresh light on whether the transactions undertaken during crisis periods differ in fundamental ways from those undertaken during more tranquil periods.

Forecasts of the quarterly real price of oil are routinely used by international organizations and central banks worldwide in assessing the global and domestic economic outlook, yet little is known about how best to generate such forecasts. Our analysis breaks new ground in several dimensions.

Following the recent financial crisis, major central banks have introduced several types of unconventional monetary policy measures, including liquidity and credit facilities, asset purchases and forward guidance. To date, these measures appear to have been successful. They restored market functioning, facilitated the transmission of monetary policy and supported economic activity. They have potential costs, however, including challenges related to the greatly expanded balance sheets of central banks and the eventual exit from these measures, as well as the vulnerabilities that can arise from prolonged monetary accommodation.

Using BoC-GEM-Fin, a large-scale DSGE model with real, nominal and financial frictions featuring a banking sector, we explore the macroeconomic implications of various types of countercyclical bank capital regulations. Results suggest that countercyclical capital requirements have a significant stabilizing effect on key macroeconomic variables, but mostly after financial shocks.

Since 2009, the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth has provided a mechanism for international macroeconomic policy coordination. The Framework has had some successes, including agreement on objectives for fiscal consolidation. However, post-crisis global growth has been neither strong nor balanced. Progress has also been slow in developing credible fiscal consolidation plans in some advanced countries and in increasing exchange rate flexibility in certain emerging economies. A stronger peer review process and enhanced analysis of international spillovers would increase the Framework’s influence on member policies.

The U.S. recovery from the Great Recession has been slow relative to other postwar-era recoveries in the United States. Encouraged by loose lending standards in the pre-crisis period, U.S. households took on unsustainable amounts of debt, making them vulnerable to adverse shocks. Subsequently, a considerable drop in asset prices forced households to repair their balance sheets. While there has been progress in household deleveraging, the government sector now needs to delever, which will restrain growth over the next few years.

The international business cycle is very important for Latin America’s economic performance as the recent global crisis vividly illustrated. This paper investigates how changes in trade linkages between China, Latin America, and the rest of the world have altered the transmission mechanism of international business cycles to Latin America.

Following gains during the 1990s, Canada’s global market share of goods exports has declined markedly in recent years. In this regard, the constant market share analysis framework is used to decompose changes in Canada’s global market share into competitiveness and structural effects over the 1990‐2010 period, as well as to draw some comparisons to a number of other countries.