Tiff Macklem was appointed Senior Deputy Governor for a term of seven years beginning 1 July, 2010. As Senior Deputy Governor, he is the Bank's Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank. Mr. Macklem's duties include overseeing strategic planning and coordinating the Bank's operations, sharing responsibility for the conduct of monetary policy as a member of the Bank's Governing Council, and participating in fulfilling the Bank's responsibilities for promoting financial stability. He also chairs the Financial Stability Board's Standing Committee on Standards Implementation. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Macklem served as Associate Deputy Minister of the federal Department of Finance and Canada's G7 Deputy.
Born in Montréal, Quebec, Mr. Macklem graduated from Queen's University in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in economics, and completed a master's degree and a PhD in economics from the University of Western Ontario. In 1984, he joined the Bank of Canada in the Department of Monetary and Financial Analysis for one year. He returned to the Bank in 1989 following the completion of his PhD. Mr. Macklem occupied increasingly senior positions in the Research Department (now Canadian Economic Analysis) until his appointment as Chief in January 2000. He was appointed Adviser to the Governor in August 2003. In 2003-4, he was seconded to the Department of Finance, returning to the Bank as a Deputy Governor in December 2004. He rejoined Finance as Associate Deputy Minister in 2007.
Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses regearing the Canadian economy for sustained growth.
Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses labour markets in Canada.
Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses how price and financial stability help promote growth and mitigate economic cycles and inequality.
Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses the importance of pressing ahead with financial reforms despite the weak global recovery.
Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses some of the challenges facing the private and public sectors as they manage risk in the new global economic landscape.
In his speech, Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses the G-20 reform agenda to achieve durable financial stability and sustainable and balanced economic growth.
In his remarks entitled Global Financial Reform: Maintaining the Momentum, delivered to the G-20 workshop organized by the Australian Treasury in Paris on 7 July 2011, Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem reviews the achievements toward a more resilient financial system and the challenges related to oversight and regulation, and reducing contagion and harmful spillovers.
In his address to the 17th Annual Economic Forum of the Americas, Senior Deputy Governor Tiff Macklem discusses the G-20 financial reform agenda and the role of central banks in mitigating systemic risk.
Canada’s advantages were very apparent through the financial crisis. They sheltered us from the worst of the storm and put Canada at the front of the pack coming out of the recession.
Canada’s advantages were very apparent through the financial crisis. They sheltered us from the worst of the storm and put Canada at the front of the pack coming out of the recession.
As a native Montrealer, I am particularly pleased to be coming home to deliver my first speech as Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada.
Now, Manitoba – right in the middle of our vast country – might seem an odd place to talk about globalization. But this province, like the rest of Canada, is very much affected by global economic forces.
The two key components of the Bank's monetary policy framework are an "anchor," the inflation target, and a "float," the flexible exchange rate. Living by the ocean, you know better than I that a good mooring is one that keeps a boat in place, yet allows some give and take for the wind and the tide.
As economies have become more interconnected through trade and financial flows in a truly global marketplace, economic developments in one location can quickly have repercussions on the other side of the globe. In 1997, what began as a currency devaluation in Thailand became a crisis with repercussions not just in Asia, but in countries as far away as Russia, Brazil, and Canada.
This article outlines one of the Bank's key approaches to dealing with the uncertainty that surrounds decisions on monetary policy: the consideration of a wide range of information from a variety of sources. More specifically, it describes the information and analysis that the monetary policy decision-makers—the Governing Council of the Bank of Canada—receive in the two or three weeks leading up to a decision on the setting of the policy rate—the target overnight interest rate. The article also describes how the Governing Council reaches this decision.
: Monetary and financial indicators; Monetary policy framework; Monetary policy implementationWhile the Bank of Canada's inflation-control target is specified in terms of the rate of increase in the total consumer price index, the Bank uses a measure of trend or "core" inflation as a short-term guide for its monetary policy actions. When the inflation targets were renewed in May 2001, the Bank announced that it was adopting a new measure of core inflation. This measure excludes the eight most volatile components of the CPI and adjusts the remaining components for the effect of changes in indirect taxes.
In this article, the author discusses the definition of the new measure of core inflation and describes some of its advantages relative to the previous measure. He notes that the new measure has a firmer statistical basis, has a better correspondence with economic theory, and does a better job of predicting future changes in overall inflation. While the new measure has these advantages, the Bank will continue to monitor a broad range of indicators when assessing the likely future path for inflation.
: Inflation targetsThis paper examines the implications of changes in economic behaviour for simple inflation-forecast–based monetary rules of the type currently used at two inflation-targeting central banks. Three types of changes in economic behaviour are considered, changes that are motivated by developments in monetary and fiscal policy in the 1990s: changes in monetary policy credibility, changes in [...]
: Credibility; Monetary policy framework; Uncertainty and monetary policyThis article summarizes the proceedings of a conference hosted by the Bank of Canada in May 1997.
The first conference held by the Bank on this subject was in 1993, two years after the introduction of inflation targeting in Canada. The 1997 conference revisited many of the analytic issues related to price stability that had been examined at the first conference, while also considering several additional questions. This time, with the extension of inflation-control targets beyond 1998 under consideration, particular emphasis was placed on the role and design of those targets.
The conference also featured a round-table discussion among practitioners of monetary policy in three inflation-targeting countries—New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Their remarks, which focussed on the experience with inflation targets, bring out very clearly the common challenges facing monetary policymakers in open economies.
: Monetary policy frameworkThe menu-cost models of price adjustment developed by Ball and Mankiw (1994;1995) predict that short-run movements in inflation should be positively related to the skewness and the variance of the distribution of disaggregated relative-price shocks in each period. We test these predictions on Canadian data using the distribution of changes in disaggregated producer prices to measure the skewness and standard deviation of relative-price shocks.
: Inflation and prices; Monetary policy frameworkThe short-run Phillips curve describes a positive short-run relationship between the level of economic activity and inflation. When the level of demand in the economy as a whole runs ahead of the level of output that the economy can supply in the short run, price pressures increase and inflation rises.
This article reviews the origins of the short-run Phillips curve with particular emphasis on the long-standing idea that the shape of this curve may be non-linear, with inflation becoming more sensitive to changes in output when the cycle of economic activity is high than when it is low. This type of non-linearity in the short-run Phillips curve, which is typically motivated by the effects of capacity constraints that limit the ability of the economy to expand in the short run, has recently attracted renewed attention. The article surveys recent research that finds some evidence of this type of non-linearity in the Phillips curve in Canada and considers the potential implications for monetary policy.
: Inflation and prices; Potential output; Transmission of monetary policyThis paper examines the macroeconomic implications of rising government debt in Canada and the short-run costs and long-run benefits of stemming the rise. The discussion begins with an evaluation of the long-run consequences of increasing government indebtedness, first based on the simple arithmetic of the government's long-run budget constraint, and then based on simulations of [...]
: Fiscal PolicyThe level of government debt in Canada relative to gross domestic product has risen steadily since the mid-1970s. Canada has not been alone in experiencing rising government indebtedness, but in comparison to other countries, Canada's debt load is now distinctly on the high side.
The author reviews some of the effects of rising government debt levels on macroeconomic performance and provides some calculations aimed at illustrating their possible long-run impact on the Canadian economy. His analysis, which is based on a model of the Canadian economy used at the Bank of Canada, suggests that higher levels of government debt reduce both the level of output and the share of output that is available for domestic consumption.
The central policy implication is that there are substantial benefits to halting the rise in government debt and thus preventing further erosion of consumption opportunities.
: Fiscal Policy; Recent economic and financial developmentsThe author develops a measure of aggregate private sector wealth in Canada and examines its ability to explain aggregate consumption of non-durables and services. This wealth measure includes financial, physical and human wealth. The author measures human wealth as the expected present value of aggregate labour income, net of government expenditures, based on a discrete [...]
: Domestic demand and components
