The rise in house prices – especially in Toronto and Vancouver – has coincided with an increase in the number of homeowners taking on high debt-to-income ratios. This has intensified debate on whether further reforms to mortgage insurance are needed to limit the build-up of risk in housing...

Canada's mortgage insurance risk needs a better backstop fund, according to a new report released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Mortgage Insurance as a Macroprudential Tool: Dealing with the Risk of a Housing Market Crash in Canada,” authors Thorsten V. Koeppl and James MacGee...

The rise in inflation in 2021-22 sparked a growing literature and debate over the causes of the surge as well as the near- and medium-term path for inflation. This review offers three key messages. First, the exceptional nature of shocks resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical...

Financial innovations are a common explanation of the rise in consumer credit and bankruptcies. To evaluate this story, we develop a simple model that incorporates two key frictions: asymmetric information about borrowers' risk of default and a fixed cost to create each contract offered by...