REAL-FINANCIAL LINKAGES IN THE CANADIAN ECONOMY: AN INPUT--OUTPUT APPROACH

The recent financial crisis highlighted the importance of better understanding the interaction between macroeconomic and financial conditions. In this paper, we provide a financial social accounting matrix for the Canadian economy and use it to assess the strength of real-financial linkages by calculating and comparing multipliers with and without endogenous financial flows. It is found that taking into account financial flows increases the impact of a final demand shock on output by 4--11%. Moreover, between 2008 and 2009H1, the investment decisions of financial institutions together with the fact that non-financial institutions were unwilling or unable to increase their financial liabilities led to estimated declines in all GDP multipliers. The impact of a final demand shock on GDP declined 3--5%, while the impact of an increase in the availability of investment funds fell 30% and 55% for financial and non-financial corporations, respectively.†<fn id="FN0000"> -super-†The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors. No responsibility for them should be attributed to Statistics Canada. </fn>