The staff report on Canada’s 2009 Article IV Consultation examines economic developments and policies. Canadian banks have weathered the crisis better than major-country peers, but the credit cycle will be challenging, particularly given high household debt. Financial instability is a tail...

This Selected Issues paper on Canada examines economic development and policies. Capital ratios before the crisis have been a key determinant of bank performance during the turmoil; and Canadian banks had ample capital. Specifically, most banks with critically low capital at end-2006 later...

The issue of productivity growth in Canada has received considerable attention reflecting its marked slowdown since the early 1970s and concerns about its implications for Canadian competitiveness. To better understand productivity developments in Canada, it is useful to decompose total factor...

This paper builds a Bayesian VAR estimation model of growth for Canada, by focusing specifically on the role of external and domestic financial indicators, including credit conditions. A variance decomposition shows that financial conditions explain one-third of the total variability in...

This paper explores factors behind Canadian banks'' relative resilience in the ongoing credit turmoil. We identify two main causes: a higher share of depository funding (vs. wholesale funding) in liabilities, and a number of regulatory and structural factors in the Canadian market that reduced...

This paper assesses productivity trends in Canada vis-a-vis the United States from two perspectives. The first one is based on estimates of total factor productivity. The second one decomposes productivity growth into two sources: investment-specific technical change, associated with...

Using data from the US, UK, Japan and Canada, this paper provides evidence on the benefits to an economy from ""multiple avenues of intermediation"". The overall conclusion is that the existence of active securities markets alongside banks is indeed beneficial to the stability of corporate...

Canadian housing prices are higher than levels consistent with current fundamentals in some provinces. The empirical estimates suggest that a 10 percent decline in housing prices would lead to a 11⁄4 percent decline in private consumption. The high level of household leverage and housing...

The Canadian monetary and fiscal policies have remained accommodative, reflecting in large measure the effective response to the crisis. Canada is expected to set the appropriate policy mix in the future, at a time of high uncertainty and significant external headwinds. Given the advanced stage...

This paper examines economic developments and policies in Canada during 1990–95. Spurred by the robust growth in the United States and the easing of monetary conditions between 1991 and 1993, economic growth in Canada continued to strengthen during 1994. Real GDP grew by 4.5 percent in 1994...