[...] In the final analysis the RTR is potentially a sound and useful measure for providing an indication of the relative effects of border protection. If offers interesting dynamic possibilities should the measure be updated annually, although the resource cost involved in widening the scope of...

In this work we extend a De Jure measure of capital account restrictions, previously assembled by Miniane (2004) for 34 economies, to a set of 181 countries for the period 1996-2005. Additionally, having in mind the pitfalls of this indicator, we propose two new measures. The first excludes...

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...

The authors explore the usefulness of macroeconomic models in analyzing global economic developments by examining movements in commodity prices between July 2007 and July 2008. They use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model and investigate the longerterm outlook for commodity...

Since the financial crisis, attention has focused on central counterparties (CCPs) as a solution to systemic risk for a variety of financial markets, ranging from repurchase agreements and options to swaps. However, internationally accepted standards and the academic literature have left...

The authors assess the potential impact of recently approved reforms to International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance; namely, the 2007 Decision on Bilateral Surveillance Over Members' Policies and the Statement of Surveillance Priorities (SSP). They conclude that these complementary reforms have...

The dramatic reduction in global demand, and the decline in the spot price of crude oil in the second half of last year, may have significant implications for the future supply of oil. Investments in conventional methods of extraction have been constrained, since easily accessible oil reserves...

The authors use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model, a multi-country, multi-sector dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking system (the BoC-GEM-FIN), to study the evolution of global current account balances following the recent global financial...