This paper presents empirical estimates of the policy and structural determinants of the natural rate of unemployment in Canada. The paper begins with a discussion of structural features of the economy which impinge on the adjustment of real wages to their equilibrium level. Estimates are...

This paper analyzes the factors driving house prices in Australia from a cross-country perspective using several approaches. It uses a cointegration technique to estimate the long-run equilibrium house prices in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and assesses the extent of a possible...

Klyuev (2008) concluded that the Canadian market for housing finance is highly advanced and sophisticated, but financing options were somewhat limited, particularly at terms longer than five years. This paper argues that the paucity of longer-term loans is caused by a five-year maturity cap on...

Like other transfer programs, a pay-as-you-go public pension system can significantly affect economic behavior and, hence, relative prices and macroeconomic aggregates. This paper illustrates some of these effects, which are important in weighing options for reforming public pensions, in the...

This paper examines possible explanations for “winner–loser reversals” in the national stock market indices of 16 countries. There is no evidence that loser countries are riskier than winner countries either in terms of standard deviations, covariance with the world market or other risk...

In recent years the Bank of Canada has made important changes in the way it conducts monetary policy. In particular, the bank has adopted explicit inflation targets and introduced significant changes to its operational framework designed to increase transparency and reduce market uncertainty....

A method of testing the relative importance for consumption of risk sharing behavior and changes in current income is proposed and estimated using data across Canadian provinces. The focus of the estimation is less on whether or not the risk sharing model can be rejected than on how much each of...

Under a flexible inflation targeting regime, should policymakers avoid any reaction to movements in the foreign exchange market? Using data for six advanced open economies explicitly targeting inflation, the paper examines empirically whether real exchange rate disequilibria systematically...

Canadian public pension plans are run on a "pay-as-you-go" basis. As the baby boom ages, contribution rates for the two main plans are projected to rise significantly, from their current level of around 5 percent of eligible earnings to over 13 percent by 2030. An alternative is to set...