Housing starts and building permits data are commonly used as leading indicators of economic activity. In British Columbia, all new homes must be registered with the Homeowner Protection Office, a branch of BC Housing, before the issuance of building permits and the start of construction. Data...

Global external imbalances widened persistently over the last several years and have narrowed abruptly over the course of the financial crisis. Understanding the extent to which structural or cyclical factors may have driven these patterns is important to assess the likely evolution of global...

The output gap is a key variable used to assess inflationary pressures in the economy, but estimates in real time are subject to uncertainty and often revised significantly. This paper assesses whether questions in the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey (BOS) can provide useful signals for...