This paper discusses broad trends in labour force participation and part-time employment across different age groups since the Great Recession and uses provincial data to identify changes related to population aging, cyclical effects and other factors. The main population age groups examined are...

The authors develop a small open-economy dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium (DSGE) model in an attempt to understand the dynamic relationships in Canadian macroeconomic data. The model differs from most recent DSGE models in two key ways. First, for prices and wages, the authors use the...

The authors construct a simple general equilibrium model of unemployment and calibrate it to the Canadian economy. Job creation and destruction are endogenous. In this model, they consider several potential factors that could contribute to the long-run increase in the Canadian unempoloyment...

Surveys provide direct information on expectations, but only short histories are available at quarterly frequencies or for long-horizon expectations. Longer histories typically contain only semi-annual observations of short-horizon forecasts. The authors fill in the gaps by constructing a...

Estimating potential output and the output gap - the difference between actual output and its potential - is important for the proper conduct of monetary policy. However, the measurement and interpretation of potential output, and hence the output gap, is fraught with uncertainty, since it is...

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes and average prices paid by consumers (“effective” prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many U.S. metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines...

Inflation dynamics in advanced countries have produced two consecutive puzzles during the years after the global financial crisis. The first puzzle emerged when inflation rates over the period 2009-11 were consistently higher than expected, although economic slack in advanced countries reached...

This paper uses real-time briefing forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to provide estimates of historical changes in the design of U.S. monetary policy and in the implied central-bank target for inflation. Empirical results support a description of policy with an...

A central bank's main concern is the general direction of future inflation, and not transitory fluctuations of the inflation rate. As a result, this paper is concerned with forecasting a simple measure of the trend of inflation, the eight-quarter CPI-inflation rate. The primary objective is to...