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 the role of long-run monetary and cyclical factors in determining exchange rate movements. Results of empirical study using a data set that includes Canada, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States support the view that exchange rate movements can be...

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...

This medium-term debt management strategy paper discusses the assessment of recent capacity building. The effective debt management and hence the design and implementation of a debt management strategy depend on the macroeconomic and institutional context, but the connection is two-way: sound...

This report to the Boards of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) is the third in a series regarding the evolution of the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) framework and the associated capacity building efforts. In 2007 the two Boards endorsed the development...

The IMF, as Trustee of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT or Trust), has entered into a new borrowing agreement with the Government of Canada (Canada), and has entered into amendments to the 2010 borrowing agreement with De Nederlandsche Bank NV (The Netherlands) and the 2011 borrowing...