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New items about your countries of interest:

* Press Briefing by Jaime Caruana, Counsellor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, and Simon Johnson, Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department, International Monetary Fund
http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2008/tr080129.htm
[Matched: United States]

* Working Paper No. 08/22: Show Me the Money: Access to Finance for Small Borrowers in Canada

Author/Editor: Klyuev, Vladimir

Summary: This paper examines access to business finance by Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to housing finance by Canadian households (particularly non-prime borrowers) against the background of a fairly concentrated and protected banking industry. It finds access broadly adequate for the former group. However, given the dominance of the large banks and their fairly low risk tolerance, financing of riskier projects is a challenge. Problems with venture capital, plausibly related to the prevalence of tax-advantaged labor-sponsored funds, exacerbate the situation for the most innovative SMEs. The paper also finds the market for housing finance to be highly advanced and sophisticated. However, non-prime mortgage financing is in its infancy in Canada, and further development of that sector (while avoiding the excesses that beset the U.S. market in the last few years) would be beneficial. More broadly, despite recent innovations, options available to Canadians for financing house purchases are still somewhat limited, with scarce availability of mortgage maturities beyond five years particularly surprising. Further advances in securitization could help progress in both of these areas.
nla_internal_2360281.jpg United States]

* Working Paper No. 08/24: Do Technology Shocks Lead to Productivity Slowdowns? Evidence from Patent Data

Author/Editor: Christiansen, Lone E.

Summary: This paper provides empirical evidence on the response of labor productivity to the arrival of new inventions. The benchmark measure of technological progress is given by data on patent applications in the U.S. over the period 1889-2002. The analysis shows that labor productivity may temporarily fall below trend after technological progress. However, the effects on productivity differ between the pre- and post-World War II periods. The pre-war period shows evidence of a productivity slowdown as a result of the arrival of new technology, whereas the post-World War II period does not. Positive effects of technology shocks tend to show up sooner in the productivity data in the later period.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=21613.0
[Matched: United States]

* Working Paper No. 08/23: Real Implications of Financial Linkages Between Canada and the United States

Author/Editor: Klyuev, Vladimir

Summary: This paper documents the extent of financial linkages between Canada and the United States and explores the impact of changes in U.S. financial conditions on financial conditions and real economic activity in Canada. It shows that close to a quarter of financing by Canadian corporations is raised south of the border. Empirical analysis using structural vector autoregressions establishes that a tightening in U.S. financial conditions has significant implications for real activity in Canada. For example, a percentage point increase in the 3- month T-bill rate, other things being equal, leads to a decline of slightly more than one percentage point in Canada's real GDP growth after 3 quarters. That decline can be decomposed into three channels: the direct financial channel, where the slowdown is attributed to a rising cost of funds for Canadian companies raising capital in the United States; the indirect financial channel, where growth is hampered as financial conditions in Canada tighten in response to a tightening in the United States; and the trade channel, which goes through a slowing in the U.S. economy, and correspondently lower demand for Canadian exports. As would be expected from the high degree of reliance on U.S. financing, the direct financial channel proves dominant in the short term.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=21619.0
[Matched: United States]



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