Lawrence Schembri

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Lawrence Schembri served as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2013 until his retirement in June 2022. In this capacity, he was one of two deputy governors responsible for overseeing the Bank’s analysis and activities promoting a stable and efficient financial system. Starting in 2016, he was responsible for overseeing the Bank’s analysis of domestic economic developments. As a member of the Bank’s governing council, he shared responsibility for decisions related to monetary policy and financial system stability and for setting the Bank’s strategic direction. Mr. Schembri joined the Bank in 1997 as a visiting research advisor in what is now the International Economic Analysis Department. In 2001, he was appointed senior research director in the same department and became its managing director in 2005. In 2010 he was appointed advisor to the governor, with responsibilities for financial stability analysis and coordinating the Bank’s contribution to the Financial Stability Board. While at the Bank, Mr. Schembri was an active researcher, publishing research on exchange rate and monetary theory and policy in open economies, the international monetary system, and financial stability. A champion of efforts to promote economic literacy and Indigenous economic opportunity, he sponsored the Bank’s Governor’s Challenge undergraduate student competition and was a founding member of the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion. He currently serves on the board of the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics. Mr. Schembri received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Bank of Canada, Mr. Schembri was an assistant professor and, later, associate professor of economics at Carleton University.

Recent Research by Lawrence Schembri

— Sep 5, 2024
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Central Bank Forward Guidance: Handle With Care

Central Bank Forward Guidance: Handle With Care is a new study that assesses the increased use and effectiveness of forward guidance by central banks—that is, providing information to the public about the projected path of their policy interest rate to shape expectations—over the last 15 to 20 years spanning the period of the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession to the COVID-19 pandemic.

— Jul 23, 2024
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We're Getting Poorer

We’re getting poorer: GDP per Capita in Canada and the OECD, 2002 - 2060 is a new study that finds Canada had the third-lowest growth in GDP per person—a broad measure of living standards—from 2014 to 2022 among 30 advanced economies in the OECD.

— Apr 11, 2024
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GDP Growth Unadjusted for Population Change—a Misleading Measure of Canada’s Economic Progress finds that due to large differences in population growth among developed countries, and Canada’s recent immigration-fuelled population surge, it’s now more useful to use per-person GDP to measure economic performance instead of overall GDP growth.