What are the implications of digitalization for prices? This paper explores this question by looking at the various channels through which digitalization can affect prices. First, we assess the importance of the direct channel - the prices of digital goods and services in the consumer price...

This note uses industry data and a unique dataset of small and medium-sized merchants to provide insights into the acquirer-merchant market in Canada. Three main findings are presented. First, smaller merchants pay their acquirer more for every dollar of card payment than larger merchants....

This paper examines whether machine learning (ML) algorithms can outperform a linear model in predicting monthly growth in Canada of both house prices and existing home sales. The aim is to apply two widely used ML techniques (support vector regression and multilayer perceptron) in economic...

The prices of commodities produced in Canada have important implications for the performance of the Canadian economy and the conduct of monetary policy. The authors explain an important change to the methodology used to construct the Bank of Canada commodity price index (BCPI). Since its...

In this paper, the authors develop a new tool to improve the short-term forecasting of real GDP growth in the euro area and Japan. This new tool, which uses unrestricted mixed-data sampling (U-MIDAS) regressions, allows an evaluation of the usefulness of a wide range of indicators in predicting...

This paper discusses how central banking is evolving in light of recent experience, with particular emphasis on the incorporation of uncertainty into policy decision-making. The sort of post-crisis uncertainty that central banks are dealing with today is more profound than that which is...

Commodity prices have increased dramatically and persistently over the past several years, followed by a sharp reversal in recent months. These large and persistent movements in commodity prices raise questions about their implications for global inflation. The process of globalization has...

We introduce bounded rationality, along the lines of Gabaix (2020), in a canonical New Keynesian model calibrated to match Canadian macroeconomic data since Canada's adoption of inflation targeting. We use the model to provide a quantitative assessment of the macroeconomic impact of flexible...

Since 1991, the Bank of Canada has had an inflation‐targeting (IT) framework established by a joint agreement between the Bank and the Government of Canada. The framework is reviewed every five years as part of the process for renewing the inflation‐control agreement. This discussion paper...

Assessing the state of the economy in real time is critical for policy-making, and understanding the risks to those assessments is equally important. Policy-makers are typically provided with point forecasts that contain insufficient information about risks. In contrast, predictive densities...