Walls of capital: quantitative easing, spatial inequality, and the winners and losers of Canada’s pandemic-era housing market

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyzes the Bank of Canada’s (BoC) pandemic-era quantitative easing (QE) programs and their distributive implications, focusing on the Canadian housing market. First, we analyse the priorities and effects of QE: increasing liquidity and encouraging lending and borrowing. Next, we identify the sectors of the economy most influenced by QE, highlighting that investment in real estate soared in comparison to other sectors. Finally, we present a case study of real estate transactions in Toronto, finding that the increased investment in residential and multi-family housing worked to the detriment of marginalised populations. In spatializing macrofinance and identifying monetary policy’s role in geographies of housing, we call for increased attention to central banks and the distributional effects of monetary policy.