Governor Tiff Macklem outlines the link between high inflation and tight labour markets. He explains how the Bank is working to rebalance the labour market and discusses how structural changes may influence the supply of workers in Canada.
Unregulated capital flows are likely excessive during a stagflation episode, owing to a macroeconomic externality operating through the economy’s supply side. Inflows raise domestic wages and cause unwelcome upward pressure on firm costs, yet market forces likely generate such inflows. Optimal capital flow management instead requires net outflows.
We assess the usefulness of various measures of core inflation over the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that Cpi-trim and CPI-median provided the best signal of underlying inflation. The favourable performance of these measures stems from their lack of reliance on historical experience, an especially valuable feature in unprecedented times.
Unusually large revisions to CPI-common in recent months stem from increased common movements across consumer price index components amid broad inflationary pressures. With recent revisions, CPI-common is more closely aligned with the Bank of Canada’s other two preferred measures of core inflation. However, caution is necessary when interpreting real-time estimates of CPI-common in the current environment.
Governor Tiff Macklem discusses how inflation has evolved in recent months and explains what the Bank is watching as it takes action to return inflation to target.
Governor Tiff Macklem explains how inflation in Canada reflects more and more what’s happening with domestic demand and what the Bank is watching as it works to bring inflation back to the 2% target.
We introduce behavioral learning equilibria (BLE) into DSGE models with boundedly rational agents using simple but optimal first order autoregressive forecasting rules. The Smets-Wouters DSGE model with BLE is estimated and fits well with inflation survey expectations. As a policy application, we show that learning requires a lower degree of interest rate smoothing.
When countries are hit by supply shocks, central banks often face the dilemma of either looking through such shocks or reacting to them to ensure that inflation expectations remain anchored. In this paper, we propose a tractable framework to capture this dilemma and then explore optimal policy under a range of assumptions about how expectations are formed.
Deputy Governor Paul Beaudry discusses the macroeconomic lessons we’ve learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what lies ahead to bring inflation back to target.