We draw a parallel between the dramatic increases of systematic variations in exchange rates and international bank lending. We find that when a country’s currency has a larger share of systematic variations, lending flows by international banks to that country become more sensitive to global lending - they also become more systematic. This parallel is particularly prevalent for large commodity exporters, including Canada. Global financial intermediation may open a new channel between the real economy and exchange rates.
This analytical note assesses the prevalence of liquidity provision by institutional investors in Canadian bonds. We find that the practice is not prevalent in Canada. Customer liquidity provision is more prevalent for less liquid bonds, on days when liquidity is already expensive or when there are larger trading volumes. In our interpretation, Canadian dealers draw on customer liquidity as a supplementary source of liquidity and only when necessary, given its cost.
Monetary policy decisions need to consider all potential outcomes, not just the most likely path for the economy. This is especially true in the presence of elevated financial system vulnerabilities, which lead to increased downside risks for future growth.
This note summarizes the reassessment of potential output, conducted by the Bank of Canada for the April 2018 Monetary Policy Report. Overall, the profile for potential output growth is expected to remain flat at 1.8 per cent between 2018 and 2020 and 1.9 per cent in 2021.
This note presents our estimates of potential output growth for the global economy through 2020. Overall, we expect global potential output growth to remain broadly stable over the projection horizon, averaging 3.3 per cent, although there is considerable uncertainty surrounding these estimates.
In this work, we use novel Canadian survey data to study how expectations of future changes in house prices are influenced by personal experiences. We find that recently experienced changes in local house prices are routinely extrapolated into expectations of year-ahead changes in national house prices.
Canadian corporate bond mutual funds have rapidly increased in number and size in recent years. Their holdings have also become riskier, increasing their exposures to credit risk, interest rate risk and liquidity risk. We also briefly discuss financial stability implications.
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.
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.
This note investigates whether Canadian corporate spreads and the excess bond premium (EBP) lead Canadian economic activity. Indeed, we find that corporate spreads precede changes in real gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada over the subsequent year. The EBP accounts for most of this property. Further, an unanticipated increase in the Canadian EBP forecasts a deterioration of domestic macroeconomic conditions: a 10-basis-point increase results in a fall in both GDP and consumer price index (CPI) of 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per cent, respectively, over three years.