Economics Reports

Canadian budget secrecy ain’t what it used to be, back in the days when mum was the word about what it will contain.

When central banks raise rates, there’s bound to be trouble. But when inflation is elevated, as it has been, you could say that the central bankers are out looking for trouble, as that’s what it takes to slow the economy and cool those price pressures.

As Tolstoy said about families, so it is for economies: happy ones are all alike, but unhappy economies are unhappy in their own way.

In the pristine world of textbook economics, subsidizing selected industrial activities is deemed to be an undesirable diversion from the free market’s invisible hand.

The word of the day for the US economy is “resilience.” That’s an apt description for an economy that has shown some surprising momentum in the first months of 2023.

A central banker’s word is their bond, at least if they want to have markets take heed the next time they try to provide guidance on what lies ahead.

The good and the bad of the “Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act”. Here is why we think policymakers should take another look at the Act in a way that is consistent with what it was intended to achieve — focusing only on single units being purchased by foreigners while exempting development of new supply from the impact of the new legislation.

The latest In Focus report focuses on wage inflation and demonstrates that the composition factor (increased share of high-paying jobs) accounted for one-fifth of overall wage inflation in the past 3 years.

Nobody can accuse bond market players of stubbornly sticking to their views. Only a couple of weeks ago, investors were ignoring what members of the US Fed..

We’re still in the early days of 2023, but it’s not too soon to be thinking about what lies beyond this year.

Huge January job gains in both the US and Canada, coupled with a solid bounce in the US ISM services report, made it readily apparent that North America was not in a recession as 2023 got under way.

Amidst all the favorable news we’ve had about inflation of late, news from the American labour market wasn’t quite as comforting.

Which economic indicators will the Bank of Canada be looking at to decide whether to hike again? The short answer is “all of them”.

The narrative is well known. The Canadian government is aiming to significantly increase the number of permanent residents (PRs) in the coming years, while the number of non-permanent residents (NPRs) continues to rise fast.

Since the Bank of Canada’s last meeting, when interest rates were hiked by 50bps, but policymakers stated that they would only be “considering” further increases, attention has turned towards what is truly meant by being “data dependent”.

A word that was seen as so ill-judged that it’s been banished from America’s economic lexicon won’t now make a comeback, but perhaps it should.