We provide new insights on the formation of inflation expectations - in particular at a time of great financial and economic turmoil - by evaluating results from a survey conducted from July 2009 through July 2010. Participants in this survey answered a weekly questionnaire about their short-,...

Over the past 15 years there has been remarkable progress in the specification and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Central banks in developed and emerging market economies have become increasingly interested in their usefulness for policy analysis and...

We analyse the evolution and main drivers of residential investment, using a panel with quarterly data for 15 advanced economies since the 1970s. Residential investment is a notably volatile component of real GDP in all countries in the sample. We find real house price growth, net migration...

Recent international experience with the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates has rekindled interest in the benefits of inflation targets above 2 per cent. We evaluate whether an increase in the inflation target to 3 or 4 per cent could improve macroeconomic stability in the Canadian...

Low positive GDP growth has been interpreted as evidence that the economy may be "stalling", implying that low growth is a strong predictor of future recessions. We examine the empirical evidence for stalling based on kernel density estimates, probit estimates and Markov switching models....

The presence of "economic slack" directly implies that an economy can grow quickly without any necessary offsetting slow growth or retrenchment in the future. Based on this link between economic slack and future economic growth, I argue for a forecastbased estimate of the output gap as a measure...

A “stalling” economy has been defined as one that experiences a discrete deterioration in economic performance following a decline in its growth rate to below some threshold level. Previous efforts to identify stalls have focused primarily on the US economy, with the threshold level being...

Should a monetary authority lean against the build-up of financial imbalances? We study this policy question in an environment in which there are recurring cycles of financial imbalances that develop over time and eventually collapse in a costly manner. The optimal policy reflects the trade-off...

Money markets are fundamentally different from stock markets. Stock markets are about price discovery for the purpose of allocating risk efficiently. Money markets are about obviating the need for price discovery using over-collateralised debt to reduce the cost of lending. Yet, attempts to...

This paper investigates the effect of cyclical macroeconomic policy and financial sector characteristics on growth. Using cross-country, cross-industry OECD data, it yields two main findings. First, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies foster growth disproportionately in more...