In the April Monetary Policy Report, the Bank noted that inflation was well above its 2 per cent target and that short-term inflation expectations had edged up.
Opening statementDavid DodgeHouse of Commons Finance Committee
The last time that Paul and I appeared before this committee was after the release of our April Report. At that time, inflation was well above its 2 per cent target, and short-term inflation expectations had edged up. Although inflation was being pushed up by special factors, there were also signs that strong domestic demand was working to broaden pressures on prices.
Since the April Monetary Policy Report, the Canadian economy has been hit by a number of unusual shocks: SARS, BSE, the Ontario electricity blackout, and the severe forest fires in British Columbia.
The author explores the role of governance mechanisms as a means of reducing financial fragility. First, he develops a simple theoretical general-equilibrium model in which instability arises due to an agency problem resulting from a conflict of interest between the borrower and lender.
Microfinance institutions now serve over 10 million poor households in the developing and developed world, and much of their success has been attributed to their innovative use of peer group lending. There is very little empirical evidence, however, to suggest that group lending schemes offer a superior institutional design over lending programs that serve individual borrowers.
Phillips curves are generally estimated under the assumption of linearity and parameter constancy. Linear models of inflation, however, have recently been criticized for their poor forecasting performance.
The authors evaluate whether an assortment of simple rules could improve how the Bank of Canada implements its inflation-targeting monetary policy. They focus on measuring the correlation between the deviations of inflation from the target and the lagged deviations of rule recommendations from the actual policy interest rate.
The authors examine the link between consumption and disaggregate wealth in Canada. They use a vector-error-correction model in which permanent and transitory shocks are identified using the restrictions implied by cointegration proposed by King, Plosser, Stock, and Watson (1991) and Gonzalo and Granger (1995).
Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said today that substantial progress has been made in building investor and consumer confidence in the face of recent economic shocks and corporate finance and accounting scandals.