May 1, 2018
Recent economic and financial developments
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April 25, 2018
Opening Statement before the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Senior Deputy Governor Wilkins and I are pleased to be back before you today to discuss the Bank’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR), which we published last week. When we were last here at the beginning of November, we saw signs that the Canadian economy was moderating after an […] -
April 23, 2018
Opening Statement before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Senior Deputy Governor Wilkins and I are pleased to be with you today to discuss the Bank’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR), which we published last week. At the time of our last appearance in October, we saw signs that the Canadian economy was moderating after an exceptionally strong […] -
March 22, 2018
Financial Stability: Taking Care of Unfinished Business
Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses three areas in which work remains to be done to improve financial stability. -
Did U.S. Consumers Respond to the 2014–2015 Oil Price Shock? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey
The impact of oil price shocks on the U.S. economy is a topic of considerable debate. In this paper, we examine the response of U.S. consumers to the 2014–2015 negative oil price shock using representative survey data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. -
Asymmetric Risks to the Economic Outlook Arising from Financial System Vulnerabilities
When financial system vulnerabilities are elevated, they can give rise to asymmetric risks to the economic outlook. To illustrate this, I consider the economic outlook presented in the Bank of Canada’s October 2017 Monetary Policy Report in the context of two key financial system vulnerabilities: high levels of household indebtedness and housing market imbalances. -
Blockchain Revolution Without the Blockchain
The technology behind blockchain has attracted a lot of attention. However, this technology is for the most part not well understood. There is no consensus on what benefits it may bring or on how it may fail. -
February 8, 2018
At the Crossroads: Innovation and Inclusive Growth
Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses technological progress and how policy-makers can harness it for economic growth that benefits everyone. -
Wages: Measurement and Key Drivers
Available sources of hourly wage data in Canada sometimes send conflicting signals about wage growth. This note thus has two objectives: first, we develop a wage measure—the wage-common—to better capture the (underlying) wage pressures reflecting the common trend across the available data sources. Second, we re-examine the relationship between wage growth and macro drivers (labour market slack and labour productivity). -
The Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases on the Canadian Economy
This note reviews the channels through which scheduled minimum wage increases over the coming years may affect Canadian economic activity and inflation and assesses their macroeconomic impacts. From reduced-form estimates of direct minimum wage pass-through, we find that consumer price index (CPI) inflation could be boosted by about 0.1 percentage point (pp) on average in 2018.